On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

My spirit is too weak⁠—mortality
  Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
  And each imagin’d 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-conceivèd 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.