Anthology 5

John Keats sees the Elgin Marbles, and takes wing in one of his finest, most dazzling sonnets - which itself takes wing in its last lines...

ON SEEING THE ELGIN MARBLES

My spirit is too weak--mortality

Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,

And each imagin'd 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.