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 't is 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-conceivèd 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.