Thursday, March 20, 2003

English Major Outbreak

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-concieved 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 magnitude.

-John Keats

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