Summary and Analysis 

"On First Looking into Chapman's

Homer"
Summary

Keats has wide experience in the reading of poetry and is familiar with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, but not until
now has he had the special aesthetic enjoyment to be gained from reading Homer in the translation of George
Chapman. For him, the discovery of Homer as translated by Chapman provides the same kind of overwhelming
excitement felt by an astronomer who has discovered a new planet or by Cortez when he first saw the Pacific
from a summit in Central America.

Analysis

Keats composed his most famous sonnet when he was only twenty years old and had comparatively little
experience in the writing of sonnets. The poem is brilliant testimony of the effect of poetry on Keats. He had
spent a night in the autumn of 1816 reading poetry with his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, who introduced him
to some of the best passages in George Chapman's translation of Homer. Keats was delighted with the
vigorous language of the Elizabethan; to him, Chapman spoke out "loud and bold." After Keats left Clarke,
around daybreak, he walked to his lodgings, sat down at his desk, wrote his tribute to Chapman, and had a
copy of it on his friend's breakfast table by ten o'clock in the morning. The poem seems to have been
composed in the white heat of excitement, in a flash of inspiration. Keats made very few changes in it, but the
changes he made show that he realized that inspiration is not enough; it must be followed by critical judgment.
Keats' changes in the poem are all improvements.

It is appropriate that the finest poem in Keats' first volume of poetry should be about poetry. At the time, poetry
meant more to him than anything else in the world. He was on the point of giving up the security of a career in
medicine for the uncertainties of a career in poetry. The first four lines of "Chapman's Homer" are a statement
of the experience he has already had as a reader of poetry: "Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold . . ." In
poetry he has found the gold that Cortez, and the other conquistadors he had read about in William
Robertson's History of America, had searched for so feverishly. As Keats is still young, there are innumerable
discoveries of "realms of gold" awaiting him. In "Chapman's Homer," he excitedly reports one such discovery.

To convey to the reader the thrill of discovery he has experienced in hearing his friend Clarke read from
Chapman's Homer to him, he uses two smiles that are both beautiful and apt. "Then felt I like some watcher of
the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken." The discovery of a new planet is so rare that only one had
been made between ancient times and 1781, when Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus. Keats,
of course, may not have had Herschel in mind, but it was the rarity of such a discovery and the emotions which
would overwhelm the discoverer that counted. Nothing less would give the reader an adequate idea of what
happened to Keats when he "heard Chapman speak out loud and bold." "Swims," the verb used to describe the
way in which a heavenly body would move into the circular lens of an astronomer's telescope, suggests
perfectly the motion of a planet as seen from the earth.

The second simile used by Keats is unquestionably the most impressive part of the sonnet. It is made up of a
number of details that fit together into an artistically pleasing whole. Cortez is "stout," that is, fearless, and he is
alert, "with eagle eyes." Only men such as he discover Pacific Oceans. His men stand about him in silent awe,
looking "at each other with a wild surmise." Their imaginations are flooded by a bewildering variety of guesses
as to what lies beyond the horizon, new Americas perhaps, filled with gold and fabulous jewels and untold
possibilities of further discoveries. They are so choked with emotion that they cannot speak. This is one of the
great moments of history, and Keats boldly appropriates it to express his own feelings of having made a thrilling
discovery beyond which there may lie countless other similar discoveries as he increases his acquaintance with
the world of poetry.

The two similes that swam "into his ken" as the poem formed itself in his mind are in keeping with the language
of travel and discovery that he uses in the octave of his sonnet. They give it a unity of imagery that makes of
the whole a tightly knit statement of what was for Keats, ardent lover of poetry that he was, a profoundly felt
experience.

A Petrarchan sonnet must not only be unified, like any other poem, but the thought must also make a change of
direction, or "turn," at the beginning of the sestet. Keats' turn is his two comparisons taken from astronomy and
exploration. Unity and coherence are assured not only by carrying the idea of discovery all the way through the
poem, but also by using the linking words "Much" and "Oft" to begin the two halves of his octave and the word
"Then" to begin his sestet. Keats, in spite of his limited experience in sonnet writing before "Chapman's
Homer," composed what is probably one of the finest Petrarchan sonnets in English poetry.

In his excitement, Keats substituted the name of Cortez for Balboa in his sonnet. In his school days he had
read about Cortez' conquest of Mexico and Balboa's discovery of the Pacific Ocean on an expedition in Darien,
an old name for part of Central America, in William Robertson's History of America. In search of a historical
example of an exciting discovery, Keats put Cortez where historically Cortez never was and made him seem to
be the discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. It is not known whether Keats or any of his friends ever became aware
of the error. It is a slight blemish in a fine poem, but, as many critics have pointed out, in poetry one looks for
truth in human nature rather than for historical truth. Ideally, both should go together.

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is a sonnet written by English poet John Keats when
he was just 20 years old. Essentially, it is a poem about poetry itself, describing a reading
experience so profound that an entire world seems to come to life. The poem talks specifically
about a translation of Homer, the Classical Greek poet, by George Chapman, an Elizabethan
poet whose translations were more concerned with the reader's experience of the text than
loyalty to the original form. The poem was published in the newspaper The Examiner soon after
it was written in 1816.


o ohn Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a sonnet that argues for the transportive

power of literature. Through reading George Chapman’s translation of the classical Greek poet,
Homer, the speaker travels via his or her imagination through the Greek world of which Homer sang.
This has a powerful effect on the speaker, which in turn makes the speaker sing the praises of
literature itself. Literature, argues the poem, occupies an important role in society and, furthermore,
facilitates a kind of imaginative travel through time and space.

The poem is set up as an extended metaphor that characterizes the speaker—who has been reading
Chapman’s Homer—as an explorer (“like stout Cortez”), bravely discovering new imaginative worlds
through the power of literature. Through Homer’s writing—via Chapman’s translation—the speaker is
allowed to visit a different time, culture, and location that otherwise would be inaccessible. Through the
example of the speaker, the poem suggests that all readers can use literature to travel in a similar
way.

The extended metaphor hasn’t been selected at random. It specifically relates to the kind of things
Homer sang about in his poetry: travel, exploration, discovery, and so on. Just as Odysseus, for
example, sailed around the Greek islands in Homer’s The Odyssey, the speaker explores these
 worlds through Homer’s writing. Literature, then, brings its characters’ experiences alive in the minds
of readers, so much so that readers themselves feel that they’re having those very experiences.

Of course, this exploration is only possible because Homer was so good at bringing this world to life.
His skill as a poet does no less than ensure that something of the classical Greek world survives for
posterity. In other words, Keats’s poem demonstrates the importance of poetry itself, even beyond
readers’ experiences—it argues that poetry records culture and, indeed, keeps it alive.

That said, it’s only through George Chapman’s English translation of Homer that the speaker is able to
“breathe” the “pure serene” of Homer’s world. Before then, the speaker had only been “told” about
Homer’s “demesne.” The word demesne refers to Homer’s kingdom, meaning both the geographical
locations in which his work is set and the more immediate “kingdom” of the book itself. That is, the
speaker had heard about the magical power of Homer’s literature—but until the speaker had read
Chapman’s translation, that power had remained dormant, trapped within the inaccessible Greek that
the speaker couldn’t read. So the poem is also making the point that literature is not a static,
unchangeable object. It, too, is alive and requires upkeep through care and attention. Chapman’s
efforts at translation have opened up Homer’s literary realm for others to explore, particularly those
who would have struggled to read it in the original language. In other words, literature’s power is not a
given—it depends on the imaginative work of people themselves.

By the end of the poem, then, the speaker is completely in awe of the power of literature. That’s why
the speaker feels like an explorer who is struck “silent” by the sight before them—Chapman’s
Homer seems to be a living, breathing world, not just words on a page.

 Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “On First

Looking into Chapman's Homer”
o Lines 1-4

From its title, the poem makes clear that its subject is literature. Indeed, the title, which references
looking into a book (Chapman's translation of Homer), suggests that the poem will specifically deal
with an individual's experience of reading literature. This means that, though the first line doesn't
explicitly state that it is metaphorical, there is already a sense from the title alone that the "realms of
gold" through which the speaker has traveled relate to literature rather than actual places.

The first four lines are, in essence, the speaker's account of their literary reading to date. The speaker
has experienced a range of literature's treasures ("gold"). Indeed, line 4's mention of "bards" loyal to
the classical Greek god Apollo indicates that the speaker has experience of
specifically classical literature, the category that Homer's works fall into. The point of these lines, then,
is to set the speaker up not as a literary novice, but as someone who has read widely. This allows the
speaker to then demonstrate just how powerful this particular translation of Homer is (this turn comes
in line 7). So, the first four lines work to establish the speaker's literary credentials.

The other important function of the first four lines is to set up the extended metaphor that enables the
poem to make its point about Chapman's Homer in an exciting and visual way. The speaker claims to
be a traveler not because of having taken actual trips around the world, but because literature itself is
a way of imaginative travel—through both time and space. The poem takes this metaphorical
exploration and runs with it throughout, alluding to common knowledge about actual explorations of
the so-called "New World" (the Americas and Oceania seen from the point of view of Western
Europeans).

These four lines all share a common consonantal sound, the /l/:

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
This soft repeating sound has a luxurious quality, reflecting the idea that treasure that is important to
the poem. Of course, this treasure is not literal "gold" but is rather intellectual and emotional, the
mental rewards of engaging literature with the imagination.

If lines 1 and 2 deal with the benefits of literature for the individual—the rewards of "gold" and
experiencing "goodly states and kingdoms"—lines 3 and 4 gesture more towards the role of literature
throughout human civilization. In Homer's time, of course, literature was a primarily spoken/sung
activity—not written. Poetry and music occupied a central role in Ancient Greek society; they were
important to communal ceremonies, cultural understanding, and collective memory. The "bards" of
Ancient Greece are loyal to Apollo because Apollo is the Greek God of art. Though these lines are by
and large positive about the speaker's experiences with literature to date, the idea that the speaker
has been going "round" these "western islands" suggests that the speaker has not quite landed on
these islands so far. That is, the speaker has looked at them from afar, but no translation has yet truly
brought them to life. That, of course, is where Chapman's Homer comes in.

There is some debate about why Keats referred to these metaphorical islands as "western." The
islands that Homer sang about are, in fact, to the east of Greece. It's unlikely to be a mistake, so it
could be an allusion to the canon of specifically western literature, of which Homer is considered a
kind of founding father. Or Keats might have made the choice in order to aid the poem's extended
metaphor, which specifically rests on the westwards travels of explorers from Europe to the Americas
and conjures the archetype of the mysterious west.
o Lines 5-6

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o Lines 7-10
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o Lines 11-14
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 “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer” Symbols

o
 Gold

The poem mentions "realms of gold" in the first line. In a literal sense, this is a reference to the
activities of Western European explorers during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. These explorers,
often sent by their monarchs, were not just "discovering" new lands, but trying to find new treasure too.
Gold was, and of course still is, a precious commodity.

But in this poem, gold has little to do with the plunder and pillage of European expansionists. This is a
different kind of treasure, one which takes place in the mind and is discovered through literature. Gold
here symbolizes a kind of intellectual and emotional richness that comes with reading, and it speaks to
the way that books can provide readers with knowledge and experience outside of their everyday lives.
o
 Planet

The appearance of the planet in line 10 symbolizes the awed reaction that Chapman's Homer has
provoked in the speaker of the poem. Planets are, in and of themselves, awesome (in the true
meaning of the word) things. That is, they represent barely knowable worlds and foreground the limits
of humankind's understanding; put simply, they inspire awe.

To discover a planet, as the "watcher of the skies" does here, is a remarkable thing. But the image of
an astronomer waiting for one to appear into his "ken" (his vision) also evokes the patience and
perseverance that are needed to get the most meaning out of reading. Through the symbol of the
planet, the poem seems to argue that through concentrated reading, people can experience entirely
new worlds, and travel far beyond the limits of their own space and time.

 “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer” Poetic

Devices & Figurative Language
o Alliteration

Alliteration occurs only sparingly in "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." One important
instance is in line 6, where the /d/ of "deep-brow'd" chimes with "demesne." Here, the poem is
constructing its extended metaphor, which is that reading is a kind of exploration. It is characterizing
Homer not just as a poet, but as a kind of ruler of a literary kingdom. Such was his power as a poet
that the worlds he built still exist, and they are still under his command. The term "deep-brow'd"
portrays Homer as an intellectual thinker, plumbing the depths of the imagination for poetic material.
The /d/ then links this creative effort with Homer's "demesne" (his kingdom). His poetic powers, then,
create an entire new world that still exists long after Homer is gone.

Another example of sort of slant alliteration is in line 12 with "eagle eyes." Here, the speaker is likening
the experience of reading Chapman's Homer to being an explorer chancing upon a new land. Cortez's
"eagle eyes" suggest the motion of eyes focusing on what's before them—which in this simile is the
Pacific Ocean seen from the awe-inspiring vantage point of the Darien mountain range. The two
similar /e/ sounds, while not exactly the same, suggest focus and precision, which also gently hints at
the way in which a reader's eyes hone in on the letters on a page.

o Allusion
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o Assonance
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o Consonance
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o Enjambment
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o Caesura
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o Extended Metaphor
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o Simile
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 “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer”

Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order
in which they appear in the poem.

o Travell'd

o Goodly

o Bards

 
o Fealty

o Apollo

o Oft

o Expanse

o Deep-brow'd

o Homer

o Demesne

o Serene

o Chapman

o Ken

o Cortez

o Eagle eyes

 
o Surmise

o Darien

o This is just an abbreviation of "traveled," which at the time of the poem's writing could still be

pronounced with three syllables, hence the abbreviation.

 Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “On First Looking
into Chapman's Homer”
o Form

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is a Petrarchan sonnet, following the typical structure of an
eight-line octave followed by a six-line sestet. These two parts typically form a kind of problem and
solution, with the octave setting out the main theme or problem and the sestet explaining the
poem's/poet's new take on that theme or solution to the problem. So here, the "problem" is that,
despite having done lots of wide-ranging reading, the speaker has never truly gotten to know Homer's
literary landscape. The solution is, of course, George Chapman's enlivening translation.

Interestingly, the turn of the poem—the transition from octave to sestet that is also known as the volta
—arguably comes early in this poem (though the rhyme scheme definitely sticks to the divisions
outlined above). It's in lines 7 and 8 that the speaker introduces the solution, in the form of Chapman's
Homer—with line 9 onwards (where the traditional turn would be) dealing specifically with the way that
this book made the speaker feel.

o Meter

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is written in iambic pentameter, which is typical
for sonnets of Keats's time. Most lines fall into this metrical scheme, which is also what Chapman
used for some of his translations of Homer—though it's not clear if it's those works that the speaker
refers to here.

The iambic pentameter is generally steady throughout the poem, though there are some notable
exceptions. The first foot of Line 11 could be read as an anapest (two unstressed syllables followed by
one stressed syllable) that emphasizes the stoutness (strength) of Cortez. The rest of the line would
then scan as an iamb, another anapest, and a second iamb:

Or like stout | Cortez | when with eag- | -le eyes
The most significant variation is in the last line. Here, the first foot is inverted from an iamb to
a trochee:
 Silent, | upon | a peak | in Dar- | -ien.
This change in meter makes the silence sudden, and, combined with the caesura that follows
immediately after the word "silent," creates a real sense of dramatic pause in the poem. This embodies
the way in which Cortez and his men were rendered awestruck—which is a simile for how the speaker
felt reading Chapman's Homer.

o Rhyme Scheme

The rhyme scheme in "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is:

ABBAABBACDCDCD

In other words, the rhymes throughout the poem conform perfectly to the Petrarchan sonnet scheme.
By doing so, the poem places itself at the crossroads between different literary traditions—the classical
world of Homer, the Italian Renaissance of Petrarch, Chapman's Elizabethan era in Britain, and
Keats's own time. This unique combination makes sense, because the poem is making the case for
the enduring power and importance of poetry across time and space.

The rhymes all ring loud and clear, perhaps borrowing some of the "loudness" and "boldness" that the
speaker experienced in reading Chapman's translation of Homer (as mentioned in line 8).

 “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer” Speaker

o The speaker in the poem is not specified, but is generally taken to be John Keats himself. Keats read

Chapman's Homer one evening with his friend Charles Clarke and was reportedly excited and
enthused by the way in which the translation brought Homer's world to life.

Regardless of whether or not the speaker is Keats himself, the speaker is certainly someone who is
well-read but has an insatiable desire for more literature. From the poem's imaginative descriptions of
the effects of good literature on the reader, it's clear that this speaker/reader is someone who engages
deeply with books. Indeed, the speaker sees reading as a kind of transportive mental travel, which,
under the right conditions, can make the reader traverse time and space through the collaborative
power of literature and the imagination.

 “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer” Setting

o Though on the surface the poem seems to be set in a world of voyages and discovery, the reference

to Homer in line 6, as well as the lines that follow, make it clear that, in reality, this poem is set in the
speaker's imagination. Or, more specifically, it is set within the interaction of the speaker's imagination
and the text of Chapman's Homer. The power of the translation, coupled with the speaker's
commitment to reading, creates Homer's world anew and turns it into the setting of this poem.
 Of course, the poem also employs extended metaphor and simile to try and capture the feeling that
reading Chapman's Homer brought about in the speaker. In a figurative sense, then, most of the poem
is set in various real landscapes around the world. The first six lines might be said to have their setting
as Greece and its surrounding islands (though the first two lines are perhaps more general)—
particularly that part of the world in the ancient classical era. Lines 9 and 10 represent a brief journey
into the night sky, while the remaining lines are set in the Americas. In particular, these concluding
lines conjure up an atmosphere of the so-called Age of Discovery, when Western European explorers
travelled to the Americas. Specifically, Darien is in Panama.

 Literary and Historical Context of “On First Looking

into Chapman's Homer”
Literary Context

John Keats is now one of the most renowned poets in the English language, and this one of his most
celebrated poems. In his own lifetime, however, Keats struggled for recognition, overshadowed by
more successful poets like William Wordsworth. This poem was written early on, when he was just 20
years old. The inspiration for the poem came—obviously enough—from Keats's reading of the Ancient
Greek poet Homer, in translation by the Elizabethan playwright and poet George Chapman. With his
translations, Chapman prioritized the reader's experience over precise loyalty to the original text,
making innovative decisions about meter and elaborating on Homer's words. Keats and his friend,
Charles Clarke, had been reading Chapman's Homer the night before this poem's composition. Clarke
recalled the event as follows:

"A beautiful copy of the folio edition of Chapman’s translation of Homer had been lent me ... and to
work we went, turning to some of the “famousest” passages, as we had scrappily known them in
[Alexander] Pope’s version ... Chapman supplied us with many an after-treat; but it was in the teeming
wonderment of this his first introduction, that, when I came down to breakfast the next morning, I found
upon my table a letter with no other enclosure than his famous sonnet, “On First Looking into
Chapman’s Homer.” We had parted, as I have already said, at day-spring, yet he contrived that I
should receive the poem from a distance of, may be, two miles by ten o’clock.”

Looked at more broadly, the poem intersects with a number of literary worlds: Homer's Ancient
Greece, Chapman's Elizabethan England, Petrarch's Renaissance Italy (the poem is a
Petrarchan sonnet) and Keats's own time. In this sense, the poem is about poetry itself, advocating for
its enduring importance stretching from the past and into the future.

Keats is generally considered a key member of the Romantic poets, in particular of the second
generation, which included writers like Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Romanticism doesn't
 mean the same thing as "romantic"—it is characterized, loosely speaking, by a deep-rooted belief in
the power of the imagination (which is clearly at play in this poem), the prophetic role of poetry in
society, the importance of nature, and need for political engagement. Keats's writing was not well
received during his lifetime, and he was the victim of snobbery from those who considered him to be
an intellectual and artistic imposter. However, his reputation quickly rose in the centuries after his
death in 1821; he died from tuberculosis at the age of just 25.

Historical Context

Keats wrote this poem not too long after the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution
of 1789, which facilitated Napoleon's rise to power. Overall, the early 19th century saw profound
changes in popular thinking about the individual's relationship to society. The influential poet/critic
William Wordsworth was particularly interested in the idea of civil liberties, though he became more
conservative as he grew older.

This particular poem has a wide historical scope, drawing a link between Homer's time and Keats's
own era. In essence, these links make a case for the power of literature as a cultural force. Line
4 gestures towards the everyday ceremonial importance of poetry in Ancient Greece, while by the
poem's end, the focus is more on the individual relationship between reader and text.

What's more, the poem's sestet is rooted in yet another history: the so-called "Age of Discovery." This
period is generally dated from the early 15th century to the early 17th century, and it denotes the
exploration of the globe by Western Europeans via sea travel. While this is often characterized as a
time of discovery in which bold Europeans chanced upon new lands, the truth is that many of these
places were already populated by indigenous peoples. The darker side of the "Age of Discovery" tells
a story of plunder, murder, and the annihilation of entire cultures. For example, the conquistador
(Spanish for "conqueror") that Keats mentions—mistakenly—in line 11 was responsible for the fall of
the Aztec Empire. The poem doesn't get into these complexities, but it nonetheless draws on the
mythic image of this era as a time of wonder and astonishment, while also perhaps suggesting that the
imaginative exercise of reading might actually be a better way to carry out this kind of exploration.

Lines 1-8

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

In the beautiful sonnet, ‘On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer’, Keats expresses his intellectual
and literary pleasures that he derived from reading of ballads and romances of the olden times.
These lines were inspired by his first reading of Chapman’s translation of homer’s Iliad and
Odyssey. In the octave of the sonnet, Keats intends to express the contrast between his reading
of other romance and this first reading of Chapman’s translation of Homer’s epic poems.

Keats says that he has read a number of books of adventurous and romantic tales. His reading
has been like traveling in the different countries of the mind – the countries of imagination and
fancy. From these travels, he has derived inestimable pleasure. They have given him pleasure as
much as the sight of the realm of gold would give a poor man. Further, Keats says that he has
explored the noble and pleasure-giving world of adventurous romances. In his imagination, he
has also been to the world of the romances delineating the tales of myth related to the people
of the romantically enchanting islands on the western coast of England and Scotland such as
Hebrides and others.

Keats also refers to romantic poems dealing with the eerie and mystical life in the western
islands. Earlier, Keats had a cursory acquaintance with Homer. But his reading of Chapman’s
translation aroused his passion in full intensity. He knew the taste of Homer, but through
Chapman, the great Greek poet became more delicious. Keats could realize the quality of “pure
serenity” of the poetry of Homer only when he read the Greek epic in Chapman’s translation.
Keats praises Chapman’s unconventional and bold approach to Homer.

When Keats read Chapman’s translation of Homer, he experienced a new sensation. Earlier, he
had enjoyed the beauties of other poets, but had no opportunity to visit Homer’s kingdom. But
his reading of Chapman’s Homer opened the ‘realm of gold’ to him. His quest for poetic beauty
and the delight he experienced in the fulfillment is compared to the joy and delight experienced
by an astronomer when he discovered a new planet.

Lines 9-14

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Keats’s reading of Chapman’s Homer unfolds new worlds of imagination and fancy to him. He
experienced new sensations. His readings of classics had been like traveling in the different
countries of the mind. From these travels, he had derived inestimable pleasure. But his reading
of Chapman’s translation of Homer’s epics gave him greater pleasure than he received from
earlier readings. He was highly inspired by his reading of Homer through Chapman.

In these lines of ‘On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer’, Keats compares his excitement to that
of an astronomer when a new star falls within the range of his telescope. The astronomer is
extremely excited at his new discovery. His joy knows no bounds because he has seen anew star.
Similarly, the discoverer is equally happy at his discovery of new land. Vasco Nunez de Balboa
looked at the Pacific with sharp eyes. He was discovering new land. His companion sailors were
in a state of utter excitement. They were conjecturing the nature and importance of this
discovery. They were tongue-tied with amazement while they were on a summit in the Isthmus
of Panama.

These lines reveal Keats’s intense attachment to romance. The image of the legendary hero with
a fiery war-like spirit standing silent and reflective on a hill-top and observing the country to be
conquered is suggestive of the joy of impending triumph.
Cortez (Herman Cortez) was a famous Spanish soldier and conqueror of the early 16 th century.
His legendary victory was over Mexico in 1519. Darien is a stretch of land on the eastern part of
the isthmus joining Mexico and South America. It is very important in the history of
geographical discoveries.

Personal Comments
John Keats composed ‘On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer’ in October 1816, Monckton
Milnes, Lord Houghton, a great admirer of John Keats, wrote of the poet and poem thus:
“Unable as he was to read the original Greek, Homer had as yet been to him a name of solemn
significance, and nothing more. His friend and literary counselor, Mr. (Cowden) Clarke,
happened to borrow Chapman’s translation, and having invited Keats to read it with him one
evening, hey continued their study till daylight. He (Clarke) describes Keats’s delight as intense,
even to shouting aloud, as some passage of especial energy struck his imagination. It was
fortunate that he was introduced to that august heroic company through an interpretation,
which preserves so much of that ancient simplicity, and in a meter that, after various attempts
including that of the hexameter, still appears the best adapted, from its pause and its length, to
represent in English the Greek-epic verse.

An accomplished scholar may perhaps be unwilling, or unable, to understand how thoroughly

the imaginative reader can fill up the necessary defects of any translation which adheres, as far
as it may be, to the tone and spirit of the original, and does not introduce fresh elements of
thought, incongruous ornaments, or cumbrous additions, be it bald and tame, he can clothe and
color it – be it harsh or ill-jointed, he can perceive the smoothness and completeness that has
been lost; only let it not be like Pope’s Homer, a new work with an old name – a portrait, itself of
considerable power and beauty, but in which the features of an individual are scarce to be
recognized. The Sonnet in which these his first impressions are concentrated was left the
following day on Mr. Clarke’s table, realizing the idea of that form of verse expressed by Keats
himself in his third Epistle as: “Swelling loudly, Up to its climax, and then dying proudly.”

Life and Works of John Keats

Born in 1795, John Keats belongs to the younger generation of the Romantic poets. Though he
lived a short life, his contribution to the poetry world and his achievement in this field has been
all the more remarkable. Keats died of consumption before he had completed his twenty-sixth
year, and is, therefore, in Shelley’s phrase, one of “the inheritors of unfulfilled renown.” Keats
was neither a rebel nor a utopian dreamer. According to him, “Poetry should be, not the vehicle
of philosophy, religious teaching, or social and political theories, but the incarnation of beauty.”
He is regarded as the greatest writer of odes in English. Though Wordsworth and Shelley have
also written some remarkable odes, no other English poet has returned to this form so often and
with so much success.

Lines 1-2

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,

  And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; 
 Right from the get-go, we have a first-person speaker. Now, it's never a good idea to
confuse speaker and poet. Even when a poem is written in first person, that poet could
be speaking in character. 
 In this case, though, it's just like Keats to start us off with a reference to himself. The
Romantics were notoriously self-centered. We don't mean that too rudely, it's just that, in
contrast to previous generations who wrote about the external world, they wrote about
their own experience. If this poem were written a hundred years earlier, it probably would
have been called "Chapman's Homer." But Keats wants to talk about his
experience reading the book.

 There's also a metaphor right off the bat. What are "realms of gold"? Well, a couple of
things, most likely. From the title, we understand that he is talking about the realms of
literature and art. He's saying that he's read a lot of books in his day, but hadn't seen
nothing until ol' Chapman came around. But he's also setting up some of the imagery of
an explorer, which he will return to at the end. The new world was the place explorers
went to seek fortunes, particularly on the look-out for precious metals.

 It's important to see this verb from Keats: "travell'd." (This is just an abbreviation of
"travelled," in case you're wondering.) At this point in his life, he hadn't made any
significant trips. He hadn't seen any of these things. But in the wonderful world of poetry,
 we don't call that fraud, we call it metaphor. And really, we've all felt that way—a great
book, a great movie does have the power to take us to a whole new place. 

 Keats claims to have been around. He descends in scale from entire realms, to states
and then to kingdoms. Generally, poets use lists (often lists of three) to convey a wide
range. Metaphorically, then, he is telling us that he's read all kinds of poetry.

Lines 3-4

  Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
 Look, you're going to find out either way, so we might as well tell you now: Keats is, well,
not so good with his social studies. If he's talking about islands that have anything to do
with Apollo, he's talking about islands on the Aegean sea, the islands from
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. But here's the thing—that's on the eastern side of Greece,
and it's sure a long way east of London, where Keats was when he wrote the poem. So
why does Keats talk about western islands? He's not really an idiot, he's just being very
sneaky. Once again, Keats is setting us up for imagery of explorers heading off to the
new world (and the West Indies).

 We really are supposed to be picturing Greece, too. These were the islands where
amazing things happened to Odysseus and his crew on their long journey home. The
Cyclops, the lotus-eaters, dudes getting turned into hogs—you name it.

 A "bard" is a poet, usually one who spoke his poems for entertainment. They are
particularly associated with the epic tradition. It's worth noting that Keats felt called to
write epic poetry and adored bards such as Homer, Shakespeare and Milton.

 "Fealty" is a medieval term for loyalty, referring specifically to tenants owing fealty to

their lords. In this case, the bards owed loyalty to the god of poetry who governed these
poetry-inspiring isles.

 Keats might not technically have believed in Apollo, but he had a more than healthy
respect for the Greek exaltation of poetry. Once, he and his friend Leigh Hunt fashioned
and wore laurel crowns for an entire evening. Young Keats even wrote a poem about
the occasion.
Lines 5-6

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

  That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; 
 "Oft" is a tots a shorter way to say "often." We hear people complain all the time about
all the apostrophes and weird shortenings. Why do they do that?

 And we smile and say: "IDK." But then we say, "J/K" and add a smiley face, because
anytime you see a shortened word in a poem, odds are that it has something to do with
preserving the meter. For more on that in this poem, check out "Form and Meter."

 The "wide expanse" is a metaphor for Homer's sprawling epic poems. Keats, like other

young men, believed that size mattered. He became obsessed, almost immediately, with
writing a long epic poem.

 In fact, most of his famous sonnets deal with this desire to write longer poetry. 

 Think about it: all the imagery so far in this poem has been BIG. That's just what we'd
expect.

 Sadly, Keats is most well-known for his shorter poems. Most of his longer works were
forced and widely criticized.

 It's interesting that Keats says he has only "been told" of Homer's work. By age twenty-
one, he would have almost certainly have read a version of Homer.

 This probably serves as another indication of how highly he values Chapman's

translation. 
 (Biography note: "Chapman" is George Chapman, an English dramatist of the
Renaissance period.) 

 Before reading Chapman's Homer, all those other versions seemed tragically
secondhand. More literally, though, Keats probably knew some Latin, but couldn't read
Homer in his original Greek.

 Why is Homer "deep-brow'd"? Did he just need some manscaping on his unibrow?
Maybe. He lived a long time ago. Actually, this is an epithet, something commonly used
by Homer to identify characters. Because poets would speak their poems aloud to the
audiences, they would attach certain identifying labels to their characters, such as 'gray-
eyed Athena' or 'wily Odysseus.' When the epithet is more metaphorical like this one, it's
 also called a kenning. "Deep-brow'd" refers to Homer's wisdom, shown by the deep
furrows in his forehead.

 "Demesne" is a super-old version of a word we still use: domain. Keats is heaping praise
on Homer for reigning supreme over the epic tradition.

Lines 7-8

  Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: 
 Sonnets always have turns. (Oh, did we mention that this is a sonnet? Well, it is, gang.
Now, scootch over to "Form and Meter" for more on that form of poetry.) No, we're not
talking about crossing lanes here. By "turn" we mean a shift in the poem's logic, moving
from one point to the next.

ADVERTISING
 These two lines wrap up the first section, called the octave (eight lines, octave—get it?).
They give us a neat little set-up for the second section of the poem by turning the poem
toward its main argument. And it does all that with the word "yet." 

 Keats goes on and on about everything he's read and the amazing realms he's seen, but
now he drops the bomb—they were all nothing compared to Chapman's poetry.

 Notice that we get our first really physical detail. Sure we've seen realms and kingdoms
and talked about Homer and Apollo, but here we "breathe" air. We
actually feel something real. That's exactly the point—that's just what Chapman's Homer
did for Keats. He took what was more abstract and made it real.

 Look at the flip-flopped syntax—it feels like this ought to read: "Yet I did never
breathe…" Instead, it begins like a question. That's a sneaky way to draw the reader in
and put something at stake. He answers the question in the next line, before he's even
asked it. But for that one line, we are wondering just like him: did he never breathe its
pure serene?

 We're aren't sure what Homer Keats is talking about here in line seven. "Serene"? This
is the guy who wrote about poking out a monster's eye with a burning spike, who
dreamed up a belching whirlpool monster, and a multi-headed, body-chomping cliff-
dweller. Homer's stories are a lot of things, but they aren't serene. This shows how
 focused Keats is on the beauty of poetry. For Keats, it isn't the content of the story that
makes a poem sing, but the language itself.

 And the Homer he discovers in Chapman's translation has a gorgeous voice. Even if he
is talking about shrieking sirens.
 That's also why the verbs "heard" and "speak" are so important in line eight. Epic poets
were meant to be heard. The words were meant to boom and echo in the ears of the
audience.

Lines 9-10

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

  When a new planet swims into his ken; 
 Ah, this is the real turn of the poem. 'Member when we said that this poem was a
sonnet? Well, more specifically, it's a Petrarchan sonnet, meaning that, after the
octave, the poem turns at the beginning of the sestet (the last six lines). There are lots of
types of turns in a sonnet—from question to answer, from point to counter-point, or
maybe it's just a shift in speaker or tone. This turn, though, is a shift in time. 

ADVERTISING
 Lines seven and eight are the moment of change, the moment when Keats first "hears"
Chapman's Homer. (Recall from line 8 that Keats describes reading Chapman's
translation as hearing him "speak out loud and bold.") 

 When that happens, everything changes. The key word there is "Then." It emphasizes
what his life was like before this event and what he is like after.

 Keats has a flair for the dramatic. He doesn't feel like an astronomer, he feels like a
"watcher of the skies." It's more ancient and, naturally, more poetic.

 We've also shifted our metaphor. We aren't looking at realms and kingdoms anymore—
we're looking at the whole universe. We talked before about Keats loving bigger and
better things. This epic poem inspires Keats to more and more ambitious goals.

 To say that the planet "swims" into the astronomer's "ken" (or, range of sight) is an
example of extreme metaphorical language called catachresis, which is a radical misuse
of a word. In this case it is the application of the verb "swim" to an entire planet.
  The metaphor here is pretty amazing. Say you're an astronomer in Keats's day. You
don't have GPS, you don't have a super-powerful telescope. You're just blindly scanning
the skies. You slow down a little bit and then… eureka! There's something new
swimming into that little magnified circle. You've found a new planet, a totally new world
that no one has ever seen before.

 This isn't just a metaphor, though. This was also breaking news. Only a few decades
before this poem was written, a new planet had been discovered by a British
astronomer. These days, we find new stuff in space all the time, but this was the first
new planet that had been unknown to ancient astronomers.
 Centuries had passed with everyone believing that we had things pretty much mapped
out up there. 

 What planet had they discovered? Uranus. (We see you trying to hold back a giggle—
how immature!)

 To get back to that work "ken" for a moment—there is a contrast here between the
narrow scope of vision we see in a telescope and the huge amounts of space we see in
that small window. We could apply that further to reading a book—it's just words on a
page, yet whole worlds unfold before us.

Lines 11-12

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

  He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men 
 The image shifts one more time and we're back to explorers of the new western world.
Who is stout Cortez? He must be referring to famed Spanish conquistador Hernán
Cortés. But, see… here's where things get a little awkward for John Keats. See, it
wasn't Cortés who discovered the Pacific for the Spanish—it was a guy named Vasco
Nuñez de Balboa. Keats had done his homework; he read lots about explorers in the
America. This time, though, it seems he just got a little confused.

 We can cut Keats some slack, though. This poem was written in one night. He had been
reading the translation of Homer with his friend the night before and, by the next
morning, this poem was already in the mail. We're sure you've never made a mistake at
three o'clock in the morning.
 Also, the whole Cortés-Balboa thing isn't really the point. In fact, no one called Keats out
on this error during his lifetime, though plenty of people had to know it wasn't right.
 Because the point of the poem is that it isn't about being the first to discover something,
it's about your personal discovery. That was the Romantic impulse. Who cares about the
specific experience of others? This is about my moment.

 We were primed earlier in the poem for these explorers. Keats already talked about
"realms of gold" and "western islands." Even though we are a long way from talking
about a book, the poem is still unified.

 That's probably why we get the epithet "stout" for Cortez. No this isn't a comment on his
weight—"stout" here means bold or daring. That's the effect that Chapman's Homer has
on Keats. He feels bolder, more inspired, having seen this new world.

 The "eagle eyes" are echoed in a poem Keats will write a year later on another piece of
art, the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. In that poem, though, the ancient works
and the wide world cause Keats to worry that he will never achieve his dream before he
dies. He feels like a "sick eagle" looking at the skies. It's an interesting contrast using the
same image.

 Line twelve only alludes to it, but Balboa was selfish. The story goes that he and his men
had heard that they were close to the rumored ocean (the Pacific) and had been told by
natives that they would be able to glimpse it from the summit of the next mountain. They
trudged up, but Balboa stopped his men short and went up alone, wanting to be the first
to see it. The dash gives us a strong break, contrasting Balboa (or for Keats, Cortés) on
top alone, and "all his men" below.

Lines 13-14

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--

  Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 
 Okay, so here's where the really sneaky stuff happens. To get it, you've got to keep the
scene straight—Balboa/Cortés is up on the mountain, seeing the Pacific for himself, and
having this incredible moment of rapture. (Where are his men? A few steps down the
trail, eating sandwiches and staring at each other probably.) 

 The key phrase though, is "wild surmise." To surmise is to suppose something is true,
even without evidence. So they are sitting around trying to imagine for themselves what
this new ocean would be like.
  Why does that matter? Because it tells us exactly what Keats believed was so great
about being a poet. A poet's job—in his mind—was to scramble up the mountain ahead
of everyone and then to report the wonders and beauties he had seen. That's what
Chapman had done for Keats. Keats couldn't "see" the vast "ocean" of Homer's work,
because it was in Greek. He needed a "stout" explorer to help him visualize it and
experience it. Poets are mediators of impossible beauty. Of course, this metaphor sort of
breaks down when you remember that Balboa could have just called his guys up the
mountain with him. 

 On to some geography: Darien is a province of Panama. (This is even more evidence

that Keats was really thinking of Balboa. Cortés never travelled in Panama.)

 The final line brings us back to the main clause of the sentence. We are led away from
Balboa/Cortés staring at the Pacific to hear the men chatting with each other down
below, but now we are called back to the peak. The word "Silent" breaks
the iambic meter of the poem. Instead of a normal da-DUM beat, we get SI-lence,
DUM-da (check out "Form and Meter" for more on that sorta stuff). It is more forceful,
calling us to attention, telling us to shut up. And with that, we are ending the poem in a
moment of quiet reflection—a very Romantic thing to do.

The title isn't super-creative. No cute puns or crazy references here, it's pretty much all
business. Still, it does tell us a few important things, though.

First, this is a lyrical poem—a short, almost songlike reflection on a specific, personal

experience. That category of poem tells us as readers to pay close attention to the
context as we read. In this case, all the metaphors and images can be applied, with a
fair amount of certainly, to Keats's experience of reading Chapman's Homer.
Also, it is interesting that Keats isn't "reading" Chapman's Homer—he is "looking into" it.
This sets us up for the imagery of new worlds and exploration, but it also tells us how
passionate Keats is. He is inspired by a brief encounter with the work—he isn't studying
it or analyzing it, he's just looking into it. It sure doesn't take much to get him going.
Remember too that this poem isn't about Homer, and it's not even about his work. It's
about the pure beauty of poetry. It's about Chapman's specific poetic powers in his
translation, something that that title brings to our attention from the very start.
Calling Card
The Form

We shouldn't be surprised to see a sonnet from any Romantic poet. Literally a sonnet is a "little
song." That was the perfect container for the Romantics, who wanted quick, personal reflections
on their experience of the world. Keats was especially talented with sonnets; in fact, many critics
agree that after Shakespeare, Keats wrote the finest sonnets in the English languages
(sorry, John Milton!). Almost all of Keats's sonnets are Petrarchan, though he wrote quite a
few Shakespearean sonnets later in his career.

Ambition

Keats wanted to do something great. He wanted to write epic poetry, to be remembered among

the greatest poets who ever lived. So this poem about the power he sees in Chapman's poetry
fits right in. He believes that being a poet is equal to exploring new worlds and staring off at
undiscovered oceans. You can hear his excitement. Later, this excitement will be colored by his
fear that he won't live long enough to achieve this fame. His most famous sonnet, "When I have
fears that I may cease to be" deals with this more morbid idea, too.
Form and Meter
Petrarchan Sonnet

The form of this poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, named after a dead Italian guy (can you guess
his name?) who wrote lots of love poems. Petrarchan sonnets—named after the Italian
poet Petrarch (pat yourself on the back if you got it right)—are made up of two big parts: the
octave (the first eight lines) and the sestet (the last six lines). The rhyme scheme of the octave
is almost always the same (ABBAABBA—where the letters correspond to the end rhyme of
each line), while the sestet scheme can vary. In this sonnet, it is simple alternating rhymes
(CDCDCD).

Every sonnet has a turn—a shift in the poem's thinking, also called a volta—and in Petrarchan
sonnets, this turn usually occurs at the end of the octave. That's what we see here. It begins to
shift in lines seven and eight when Keats discovers Chapman's translation, but really turns at
line nine when Keats tells us how that experience made him feel.

Sonnets written in English are almost always written in iambic pentameter, and that's what we
have here. If you didn't click the link to read all about it (shame on you!), iambic pentameter
means lines of ten syllables with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables (or, iambs). The
pattern sounds like da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM. For example:

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen. (2)

That meter won't be perfect, though; Keats reserves the right to change it when he wants to
create an effect. Most often, this means switching the stress in the first two syllables, which we
see in the first and last lines ("MUCH have" and "SI-lence"). Those reverse-iamb pairs are
called trochees, with the stress of the pair falling on the first syllable, rather than that last.

Why would Keats mess with his iambs? Well, he throws on the metrical breaks with these
trochees to really punch up words he wants to stress. Interestingly enough, they come at the
first and the last lines of the poem, where emphasis is naturally going to be anyway. Since they
work against the rhythmic grain of the rest of the poem, we as readers can't help but have our
ears (even our inner ears, if we're reading silently) perk up and take note.

For the rest of the lines, the poem is actually very consistent in its meter compared to most.
That explains Keats' use of abbreviated words to make sure that everything fits into his metrical
plan. The only other significant variations occur in lines eleven and twelve. For line eleven to be
iambic, we have to force Cortez to be pronounced with a strong stress on the first syllable:

or like stout cortez when with eagle eyes.

(But it's possible that it would have been pronounced that way back in Keats' day in England—in
his poem, Lord Byron pronounced Don Juan "Don JOO-on" to make his rhyme scheme work.)
Line twelve also has an extra unstressed syllable—on the word "pa-CIF-ic." Extra unstressed
syllables weren't really considered a true break with the rhythm when Keats was writing, though.

By and large, Keats is right in lockstop with Petrarch's sonnet plan—and we think that makes a
lot of sense. Here he is, celebrating the translation of the classic writings of Homer. So—hey,
what better way to celebrate a classic work, and its translation, than by expressing oneself in a
classic form, which has also been borrowed from an older, foreign writer. With this poem, then,
Keats is propping up three writers in one: Chapman, Homer, and Petrarch.
Geography

Land becomes a powerful metaphor for Keats's view of literature. In the poem, we see

mapped, politically-stable realms and states and kingdoms, but we also see new and
uncharted lands that are ripe for exploration.
 Line 1: The "realms of gold" could literally refer to the new world in the west where
gold was being mined.

 Line 2: "States" and "kingdoms" sound more like political realms but remind us of the
people we would meet in these far-off places, much like characters in a book.
 Line 3: The "western islands" seem to refer—ironically—to the islands off
the east coast of Greece where Homer set his epics, but Keats probably used
western islands to refer again to the (relatively) newly discovered Americas. 

 Line 5: The "demesne," or domain, of Homer was both the Grecian world and his
own works. This use of geography as a symbol here reminds us that authors are
the creators of these worlds.

 Line 14: Keats shows his metaphorical range by having us travel from Homer's
Greece all the way to a mountain in Panama.
At the start of the poem, Keats tells us that he's no backwater bumpkin; he's read lots of
books and seen all the different worlds that authors can create. Particularly, he's heard
and read a lot about the world of the ancient Greeks and all the surrounding areas. He's
even heard of Homer (no, not that Homer, this Homer. That's just a set-up, though, as
he explains that he never truly experienced that world until he read Chapman's
translation of Homer's work.
When he read that book, it was a moment of pure discovery. He tells us that he felt like an
astronomer who just discovered a new planet in his telescope, or like the explorer who stood on
the western edge of the Americas and looked out on the Pacific Ocean for the first time. Way to
knock it out of the park, Chapman
The symbol of exploration has two layers. The first and obvious layer of meaning is that
all readers are explorers of new worlds when they read. Keats describes himself as one
who explores all around and takes extreme pleasure in finding these new and exciting
lands.

The second layer, though, is the poet as a discoverer. The poet is the one who first
finds this world and then translates it to others. In this way, Keats believed that poets
had huge responsibilities to the world.
 Line 1: Keats sees himself as a traveller, and explorer of these literary lands.

 Line 3: The reference to the "western islands" slyly prepares the reader to hear
about Spanish explorers in the new world at the end of the poem.

 Line 9-10: Astronomers are more modern-day explorers. They are working to
map out not just our own world but worlds beyond our world. In this case, Keats
is referring to the recent discovery of Uranus.

 Line 11: Okay, so Keats really meant Balboa, not Cortés, but still, we're talking
about explorers, right? Balboa was the first explorer to see the Pacific Ocean.