John Keats

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On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

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 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.