On Seeing The Elgin Marbles For The First Time
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 indescribable 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.


I don't think this is anywhere near the best poem ever written, but as it's Keats, and thus by the pen of a man with a remarkable poetic talent, I'm posting it here. It's a puzzling work, I find. the metaphor of the eagle is evocative but a bit confusing. And the middle section, about not having the cloudy winds to keep fresh puzzles me more than the rest of it.

The poet is responding to looking at the Elgin Marbles, which are the Athenian Parthenon's frieze, brought to England by Lord Elgin (hence the name of the marbles). I wanted to know what they were representing but, as is often the case, the meaning or story of the marbles is obscured by the story of what is happening with the marbles. Such contemporary concerns are far from interesting, but I suppose relevant to some.