On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

In John Keats’ “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” Keats uses strong imagery in describing his first experience at the Elgin Marbles, also known as the Parthenon Marbles. In doing brief research it has come to my knowledge that the Elgin Marbles originally existed at the Parthenon and other buildings of the Acropolis in Athens, but were removed by the 7th Earl of Elgin and eventually bought by the British government in 1816. This poem, being written in 1817, occurred just after Keats visited these marbles in a British museum and is littered with the emotions he felt at the time.
At first, the rhyme scheme is cluttered and shows little formal structure when compared to a typical sonnet. The first line ends in the word “Mortality,” which rhymes with no other line in the poem. This “lone wolf” of a word signifies the solidarity that Keats felt at the time when he first saw the exhibit in the museum. The sheer awe of these great sculptures left Keats in weak spirits. This one emotion leads Keats to darker and more serious emotions as well. Throughout the next four lines, or quatrain, Keats’ descriptions lead me to believe that he is extremely depressed and worried. He is worried about his imminent death (even though I doubt he actually knew he was about to die) after viewing sculptures of gods. Within this quatrain, it is evident that Keats was able to put a finger on the specific feelings he felt at this time because he could describe them while fitting them into a normal “AABB” rhyme scheme.
After the first quatrain or so, Keats uses intense imagery in his poem in order to mask the sad feelings he felt and rationalize his situation. In being in the presence of gods, Keats takes a sigh of relief in knowing that it is not his responsibility of “the cloudy winds to keep fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.” At the same time, Keats is somewhat angered that he can even begin to think that it is a good thing that being the keeper of the morning winds is his responsibility. It is at this point that Keats’ emotions have begun to take over him. It is almost as if since he has been standing in the presence of sculptures of the gods, the “grandeur” that is associated with these sculptures has triggered a sort of self pity that Keats’ feels in his life he will not be able to amount to what these gods have amounted to. It is almost as if the gods are a means of giving a person a reality check. The person viewing the sculptures either realizes that he/she has a great load of work to do or comes to terms with the fact that he/she will not amount to anything special in the world. It is at this point, the very end of the poem, that Keats appears as if he has come to terms with the latter of the two options. This could also be viewed as the volta because Keats is no longer overwhelmed by emotion, but rather calm and serene with his newly embraced future. The hyphens between words in the last couplet show a slow process of letting go. The last word “magnitude,” is a word that does not rhyme with other words in the poem, signifying the same thing “mortality” did in the first line; that Keats is at peace with solidarity.