Poem by John Keats

To Haydon with a Sonnet Written on seeing the Elgin Marbles

Haydon! Forgive me, that I cannot speak
Definitively on these mighty things;
Forgive me that I have not Eagle’s wings—
That what I want I know not where to seek:
And think that I would not be over meek
In rolling out upfollow’d thunderings,
Even to the steep of Helciconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak—
Think too that all those numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture’s hem?
For when men star’d at what was most divine
With browless idiotism—o’erwise phlegm—
Thou hadst beheld the Hesperean shine
Of their star in the East, and gone to worship them.

1. What the Thrush Said
2. Written in Answer to a Sonnet by J.H. Reynolds
3. To a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall
4. Song (“The stranger lighted from his steed”)
5. Song of Four Faries

Print

5179 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version