I. <br />Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak <br />Definitively of these mighty things; <br />Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings, <br />That what I want I know not where to seek, <br />And think that I would not be over-meek, <br />In rolling out upfollowed thunderings, <br />Even to the steep of Heliconian springs, <br />Were I of ample strength for such a freak. <br />Think, too, that all these numbers should be thine; <br />Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture's hem? <br />For, when men stared at what was most divine <br />With brainless idiotism and o'erwise phlegm, <br />Thou hadst beheld the full Hesperian shine <br />Of their star in the east, and gone to worship them. <br /> <br />II. On Seeing The Elgin Marbles. <br /> <br />My spirit is too weak - mortality <br />Weighs heavily upon me like unwilling sleep, <br />And each imagined pinnacle and steep <br />Of godlike hardship tells me I must die <br />Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. <br />Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep <br />That I have not the cloudy winds to keep, <br />Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. <br />Such dim-conceived glories of the brain <br />Bring round the heart an undescribable feud; <br />So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, <br />That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude <br />Wasting of old Time -- with a billowy main -- <br />A sun -- a shadow of a magnitude.<br /><br />John Keats<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/two-sonnets-to-haydon-with-a-sonnet-written-on-seeing-the-elgin-marbles/
