Keats and The Brits

I read sonnets I and II probably about 20 times trying to decide what I thought they were about.  I still haven’t exactly come to a definitive answer to that question though.  I will try to type up a few theories I have in mind.  John Keats references to his illness several times in both of these sonnets.  In the first sonnet he says “Were I of ample strength for such a freak” and in the second one he says “godlike hardship tells me that I must die/Like a sick eagle looking at the sky”.  Both of these sonnets are about the Elgin marbles so maybe he is comparing his sickness to the way some of the British people look at the marbles.  Keats obviously does not agree with those who took the Elgin marbles away from Greece.  In the first sonnet he states “For, when men stared at what was most divine/With brainless idiotism and o’erwise phlegm” .  He seems to be saying that men stare at these marbles and have no idea what they mean or how grand they actually are.  In the second sonnet he says “Grecian grandeur with the rude/Wasting of Old Time”.  He might be saying that these Grecian artifacts are wasting away in a British museum when they should be elsewhere.

Whether any of this is true, I have no idea. I think an A for effort is in order though.