Keats poem “On Seeing the Elgin Marble” is a very powerful piece.
It is written in the form of a Petrarchan sonnet which means it is composed of
an octet and a sestet. In the first part of the poem, which is the octet, he
describes the pain of realizing his own mortality. This probably referred to
his sickness and growing weakness which he succumbed to in his early 20’s. In
this part of the poem, he uses a lot of nature imagery such as the eagle, “Like
a sick eagle looking at the sky.” This is powerful because in this simile, he
is comparing himself to a majestic bird that normally roams the skies, but he
is so helpless and weak that all he can do is stare at it and become more
depressed. In the sestet, he tries to resolve the reasons for his pain and
begins to come to terms with them a little bit. Here is where he refers to the
Elgin Marbles themselves, which are Athenian marble works of art. He seems to
be jealous of them, saying that they cause him to have an “indescribable feud”
because they are beautiful and can “live” forever.
The concluding sestet certainly communicates Keats's jealousy towards the marbles' immortality, but I also sense some harsher resentment on Keats's part. The "Grecian grandeur" of the art is mixed with "rude wasting of old time," nearly suggesting that the marbles are unworthy of the extension they are granted on earth. Earlier in the poem, Keats alludes that he will die in a pathetic, yet noble manner, "like a sick eagle looking at the sky." Perhaps with this he is suggesting that he will leave the earth having once been something important--at least animate--as opposed to being in an eternal state of stillness such as that in which the art is allowed to remain. Whether is is out of jealousy or not, Keats nearly describes the marbles as useless, making "Ode on a Grecian Urn" an interesting paradox for its expressions of awe toward such artwork.
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