On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats, 1817
My spirit is too weak—mortalityWeighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,And each imagin'd pinnacle and steepOf godlike hardship tells me I must dieLike a sick Eagle looking at the sky.Yet 't is a gentle luxury to weepThat I have not the cloudy winds to keep,Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.Such dim-conceivèd glories of the brainBring round the heart an indescribable feud;So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rudeWasting of old Time—with a billowy main—A sun—a shadow of a magnitude.