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 ’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-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. + 