by John Keats (1795 - 1821)
My spirit is too weak; mortality
Language: English
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.
C. Ives sets lines 1-5
G. Bachlund sets lines 1-5
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View text with all available footnotesText Authorship:
- by John Keats (1795 - 1821), "On seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time" [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 14
Word count: 103