Lord Byron

A portrait of Lord Byron, which gets at the adventurous, roguish side of his character. The Albanian dress also shows how exotic his audience found him to be. If only he had spent more time writing poetry and less time fighting revolutions!

Keats, Vase-Gazing

Keats sees Greek amphoras (a certain kind of vase) at the British Museum [see top image].  He also is reading catalogues for artistic exhibitions.  The bottom image is Keats's rendering of images of the so-called Sosibios vase (middle image).

Lord Elgin's Marbles

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/article_index/w/what_are_the_elgin_marbles.aspx

From the British Museum:
 

What are the 'Elgin Marbles'?

The 'Elgin Marbles' is a popular term that in its widest use may refer to the collection of stone objects - sculptures, inscriptions and architectural features - acquired by Lord Elgin during his time as ambassador to the Ottoman court of the Sultan in Istanbul. More specifically, and more usually, it is used to refer to those sculptures, inscriptions and architectural features that he acquired in Athens between 1801 and 1805. These objects were purchased by the British Parliament from Lord Elgin in 1816 and presented by Parliament to the British Museum.

The collection includes sculptures from the Parthenon, roughly half of what now survives: 247 feet of the original 524 feet of frieze; 15 of 92 metopes; 17 figures from the pediments, and various other pieces of architecture. It also includes objects from other buildings on the Acropolis: the Erechtheion, the Propylaia, and the Temple of Athena Nike.

In the nineteenth century the term 'Elgin Marbles' was used to describe the collection, which was housed in the Elgin Room at the British Museum, completed in 1832, where it remained until the Duveen Gallery (Room 18) was built.

Herschel, The Discovery of Uranus

Herschel's note on his new discovery (the planet Uranus) reads: "curious either nebulous star or perhaps a comet"

Keats: Option A

When I have fears that I may cease to be

 When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high grav'd books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to Nothingness do sink.

Keats: Option B

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. 

 

 

Keats: Option C

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

 Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
 Round many western islands have I been
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
 That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
 When a new planet swims into his ken;
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
 He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
 Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

From Chapman's Odyssey (1616):

HE man, O Muse, inform, that many a way

      Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay;
      That wandered wondrous far, when he the town
      Of sacred Troy had sack'd and shivered down;
      The cities of a world of nations,                                5
      With all their manners, minds, and fashions,
      He saw and knew; at sea felt many woes,
      Much care sustained, to save from overthrows
      Himself and friends in their retreat for home;
      But so their fates he could not overcome,                       10
      Though much he thirsted it. O men unwise,
      They perish'd by their own impieties,
      That in their hunger's rapine would not shun
      The oxen of the lofty-going Sun,
      Who therefore from their eyes the day bereft                    15
      Of safe return. These acts, in some part left,
      Tell us, as others, deified Seed of Jove.