On first seeing the Elgin Marbles

Plot: The poem is essentially a mental journey of John Keats as he views the Elgin Marbles, expressing feelings of awe, humility, and a conscious recognition of his mortality.
Structure & Language Techniques: The poem is structured as a Petrarchan sonnet with enjambment and it utilises vivid, romantic language to bring to life the marbles and the emotions they inspire.
Themes & Linking Poems: The key themes revolve around mortality, antiquity, and art’s permanence, thus linking to other Keats poems like “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ode to a Nightingale”.
Key Quotes: The quote “Still wilt thou wrestle, save when the extreme of enervation on thy wasted form, falls a chill blight of very dissolution” is particularly notable, serving as a poignant depiction of the human struggle with mortality.
Poet & Context: Keats, a leading figure in the second generation of the Romantic poets, wrote this sonnet in 1817 after visiting the British Museum where the marbles were displayed, capturing the early 19th-century fascination with classical antiquity.