Wednesday 27 December 2006

On seeing the Elgin Marbles , a poem by John Keats

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 wings 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.

John Keats

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