On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
Keats, John (1795-1821)
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-conceivèd 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.