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by John Keats (1795 - 1821)

My spirit is too weak; mortality
Language: English 
Our translations:  FRE GER HUN
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.

Available sung texts:   ← What is this?

•   G. Bachlund •   C. Ives 

C. Ives sets lines 1-5
G. Bachlund sets lines 1-5

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View text with all available footnotes

Text 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]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Gary Bachlund (b. 1947), "Like a sick eagle", 1985, lines 1-5 [ medium voice and piano ], from Three Little Americana Songs, no. 3 [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Charles Edward Ives (1874 - 1954), "Like a sick eagle", 1920, published 1921, lines 1-5 [ voice and piano ] [sung text checked 1 time]
  • by Roger Guy Steptoe (b. 1953), "On seeing the Elgin Marbles", 1976, first performed 1978 [ tenor and piano ], from Five Songs for Tenor and Piano [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • FRE French (Français) (Jean-Pierre Granger) , "En contemplant les marbres d'Elgin pour la première fois", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Beim ersten Sehen der Parthenon Friese", copyright © 2013, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
  • HUN Hungarian (Magyar) (Tamás Rédey) , copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission


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

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–Emily Ezust, Founder

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