Read the passage from "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.
Now, read the passage from "Ode on Intimations of Morality," another poem from the romantic period.
The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth.
What theme do both passages share?
Life is bleak.
Life is precious.
Death is inevitable.
Death is an illusion.