The Argument of the Heart, Death and Greece (On Seeing the Elgin Marbles Poem Analysis)

In John Keats’ sonnet On Seeing the Elgin Marbles the mask explores the perplexity of human life with the inevitability of death taken in count. This analysis’ aim is to evaluate the contrasts and puzzling views on death and life implied in the poem, alongside the underline references to the Greek sculpture after which the poem is titled. 

The poem begins with the following line “My spirit is too weak; mortality.” (Keats 1) The speaker seems to notify the mortality as one would a person, which might be why the author used the semicolon while writing the sonnet. The persona informs the mortality that its soul is withering, encrypting the speaker is indeed dying, or viewing death as an inescapable enclosing point of human life. Nevertheless, it appears the speaker bothers himself with the imminent demise, stating “weighs heavily … like unwilling sleep.” Furthermore, it seems the voice is an abundance of pain, leaving it unable to remain awake and even feeling bounded to the ground due to an illness. Additionally, here, Keats may be referring to his thrombosis. The simile “Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.” may be suggesting the struggle of not being able to experience everything there is to life. By now, we can presume that the speaker is a human being, who is suffering from an incurable sickness. The first five lines seem to portray the image of exhaustion, regret, unfairness and agony. {left out the And … die}

However, the succeeding phrases signify a change of attitude towards the acknowledged demise. The persona perceives the awareness of dying as a perk and begins to savour the time it has left. It enjoys even the “luxury to weep”, naming it “gentle” in other words sweet and soft. This phrase evokes the imagery of vast relief. Indicating there are things which even an ill person can be grateful for. “[It is] a gentle luxury to weep” paraphrases the greatness of knowing about the approaching death. The speaker has the ability convey his grievance and resolve his conflicts, cherish the little things in life before he passes away as it suggests in these lines: “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,” (Keats 7-9).

Cloudy winds might be a metaphor for regrets or conflicts the persona could have encountered within their life and that it has resolved or moved past them. The ensuing line expresses the excitement for each day the speaker wakes up. He welcomes every new dawn of the day. Yet, it appears as if there was something missing in his thoughts, like there were mysterious treasures hidden within the speaker’s brain such as “dim-conceived glories”.

In addition, Keats introduces the “indescribable feud of the heart”. Feud, in other words, a quarrel, summarizes the persona’s conflict over the upcoming death just as described above in this thesis. Perhaps, the heart also portrays a symbol for the persona’s feelings, which persist on staying alive. And finally, the last line “A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.” (Keats 14) beautifully concludes the contrast between the negative and positive i

Other than the concepts of death, there is the theme of Greece. Imagine reading the sonnet without its name. Suddenly, the motifs of Greece look quite subtle. The only lines with a direct mention of Greece or Greek symbols are there “That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude / Wasting of old Time -- with billowy main"