On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
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.
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 undescribable 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.
"On Seeing the Elgin Marbles" is divided into two distinct parts. Lines 1-8 speak of the weight of mortality and a dim consolation. Keats admits his weakness and inability to confront "godlike hardship" (4). The very trouble that lifts Keats above merely pulls him downward. He is struggling with human mortality. "Like a sick eagle looking at the sky" (5) serves to suggest that even as Keats contemplates the earth (mortality), he is unable to rest in it. Lines 6-8 are about Keats consolation in his mortality, and the lack of responsibility he can embrace in being mortal. There is a distinct shift in beginning with line 9.
ReplyDeleteKeats shifts into alternating rhyming couplets which contributes to the dizzying effect that culminates to the last line. The alternating rhyming couplets cause the verse to move in a circle, causing the mind to return again to one rhyme and then around to another. Keats never fully resolves the sonnet, but slowly (by use of broken syntax) slows the dizzying effect and leaves the reader to ponder.
Keats is commenting on the distinctness of man's soul. Though man is mortal and must die, there is something of the "godlike" within him that rebels. The comparison of a sick eagle looking at the sky demonstrates this contradiction. An eagle finds its natural place in the sky. However, a sick eagle that cannot fly gazes at the place where it feels it belongs and senses its loss. The "dizzy pain" is part of this incongruity. "Grecian grandeur" is the immortalization of art, words, and stone yet time and old age wears away at man. Yet, despite the "wasting of old age" man, Keats, is aware of a "magnitude" of which he can only see its shadow.
ReplyDeleteThe enjambment that strikes me the most occurs between the first and second lines. The complete phrase would read "mortality weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep." But Keats keeps mortality on the first line, separating it from the rest of the phrase. The separation emphasizes the heavy weight that mortality brings to Keats' narrator. The drop of the eyes from the line ending on mortality to "weighs heavily" mimics the sinking feeling that a heavy weight has on a person. The enjambment allows the content to be physically experienced by the reader in a lesser way, allowing the feeling he is trying to convey to reach the reader.
ReplyDeleteI've been awake for two days without sleep so, fittingly, I'll choose to write about lines two and three here. I find it so intriguingly true that he says "unwilling sleep" has "imagined pinnacle and steep", just the way that falling asleep when you don't want to is an up and down battle, so is the imagery of the rest of the poem. But, the sleep I am about to have (although it's only 6:45pm) is not unwilling, so I'll try not to worry about it. Goodnight everyone!
ReplyDeleteI absolutely love the line, "Like sick eagles looking at the sky." Of every description in the sonnet, this one is the most concrete example, and is also the clearest. This line alone communicates everything the poem sums up for us: longing, deep longing, for what we are almost positive we cannot attain. A sick eagle cannot fly, but it can still look into the sky, its paradise, and miss that freedom deeply. It is still a winged creature, and is therefore structured in a way permitting flight, but its circumstances impose cruel limitations--just as we are made in the image of God (structure), but have only one way to fulfill our longing to be like Him (circumstance), via Christ.
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ReplyDeleteThe rhyme scheme of “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” is unique and does not follow a specific pattern. The first line does not even rhyme with the rest of the poem (I suppose you could argue that it is a slant rhyme with “die” and “sky” in lines 3-4, but I think that would be pushing it). In the rest of the poem, the lines rhyme in varying places, but there is no consistent pattern through the poem. The rhyme scheme of the poem connects to its meaning. The speaker of the poem is “weak” and being weighed upon by mortality as “unwilling sleep;” similarly, the poem’s rhyming is scattered, as if Keats wrote the poem while sleep was slowly trying to overtake him.
ReplyDeleteKeats' diction is what really impressed upon me here. His word choice creates the central juxtaposition in the poem between the body's confinement to mortality and the freedom of the mind. This tension is particularly felt in Keats' description of himself as a "sick eagle looking at the sky" (5). An eagle is symbolic of freedom, representing the majesty and freedom of the poet's mind, yet he is sickened by the "hardships" of mortality and disease. At this point he still has the mental prowess and clarity to look upon the sky and perceive its scope and beauty, yet his physical limitations prevent him from flying it.
ReplyDeleteWe can also see Keats' problem of a failing body married to a still dexterous mind in lines 9-12. He talks about a "feud" being waged in his heart between the "glories of the brain" and the "dizzy[ing] pain" of his flesh. The sentence structure of the last two lines creates a similar disorienting and painful effect in the reader's mind: "Wasting of old time—with a billowy main— A sun—a shadow of a magnitude." Keats' fragmentary statements here tug the reader back and forth a bit-- starting up a thought, and then pulling back. It's a heart-breaking poem, and, ultimately, perfectly relatable. As a young reader (only a year or two younger than Keats at the time), I feel his fear of dying young and being less than a "shadow" in my lifetime. The poem is obviously not written about a mature individual facing death after a long, fulfilling life. Rather, the poignancy of the work comes from its perspective of a young man coming to terms with the inevitability of mortality before he has really lived his life. He is still just a "shadow of magnitude."
Well, in Keats' mind, at least. To us it seems he rather spectacularly fulfilled his potential for having such an unfortunately abbreviated life.
Chelsea Tatum
I saw the Elgin Marbles this summer in London, and one of the things that jumped out at me then as it does now, is how big, concrete, and heavy the stones are. Keats brilliantly uses this vocabulary of weakness/strength and weight/weightlessness in his poem when he describes mortality as something that weighs heavy on him. Other images using this vocabulary are included, i.e. the language of (weightless) clouds. The weightlessness of this poem is also seen in the open vowel choices that Keats makes and the images they describe, i.e. cloudy, opening, morning.
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