On Seeing the Elgin Marbles by John Keats
When I read this poem, I was reminded of reading (and enjoying!) Stealing Athena by Karen Essex, and that I want to read Mistress of the Elgin Marbles by Susan Nagel.
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
By John Keats
My spirit is too weak—mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old time—with a billowy main—
A sun—a shadow of a magnitude.
