On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

Keats’s “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” is an ekphrastic poem—a poem that describes a work of visual art. The work of visual art in question, as the title reveals, is the Elgin Marbles, a set of Greek sculptures that once decorated the Parthenon in Athens. The sculptures would have been over 2,000 years old when Keats saw them on display in London. However, the poem is an unusual take on the typical ekphrastic poem. In fact, the first two lines of the poem do not describe the sculptures at all, and may even catch the reader by surprise: “My spirit is too weak—mortality / Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep” (Lines 1-2). These opening lines signal that what really interests Keats is not the Elgin Marbles themselves but the emotion that seeing these ancient sculptures evokes in him.

Keats does not describe the sculptures in so many words. He does not say what scenes, mythological or mundane, are portrayed by the sculptures, does not explain what condition they are in, does not remark on their historical context or significance. His ekphrasis, rather, is introspective. “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” is first and foremost a poem about