What is the theme of John Keats' poem "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles"?

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 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.

What is the theme of John Keats' poem "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles"?
John Keats was obsessed with his own mortality. He was convinced that he would die young, which he did. He was here comparing his own life with the marble statues, once beautiful in Grecian granduer. He knew that eventually he too would be past his prime and broken down by time.