On Seeing The Elgin Marbles Romantic
A combination of obscure and abstract images give the poem a lightness which belies its proposed interest in stone and monuments.
On seeing the elgin marbles romantic. On seeing the elgin marbles john keats 1795 1821 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 at the sky. Haydon had been one of the most passionate advocates for the purchase of the marbles for the nation. Beauty lies throughout every corner of the universe. The marbles represent the best of human imagination.
Themes in on seeing the elgin marbles the worth of human artistry the poem is a reflection on the pleasures and the pains of human creativity. Poets like keats harness this beauty whether it is seen as beautiful or not and twist it to have an underlying meaning. The parthenon marbles acquired by elgin include seventeen figures from the statuary from the east and west pediments of the parthenon fifteen of the original 92 of the metope panels depicting battles between the lapiths and the centaurs as well as 247 feet 75 meters of the original 524 feet 160 meters of the parthenon frieze which decorated the horizontal course set above the interior. Through both love and pain depicted in the poem on seeing the elgin marbles john keats is able to demonstrate how he uncovers the enigma of beauty in our world.
He wrote this sonnet the same evening. Although he died at the age of twenty five keats had perhaps the most remarkable career of any english poet.