On seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time

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 towards 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.