On First Looking Into Chapmans Homer

This poem is an expression of how the poet John Keats felt after rediscovering Homer¡¦s ¡§The Odyssey and the Iliad¡¨ when he read Chapman¡¦s English translation of this Greek classic. To express this he uses the form of a sonnet, with fourteen lines, every set of two lines rhyming.

The first four lines are one long sentence consisting mainly as metaphors to summarize his full meaning in whole.

¡§Much have I travell¡¦d in the realms of gold,

and many goodly states and kingdoms seen¡¨.

This can be understood only in a ¡§literary¡¨ and not a ¡§literal¡¨ sense. I say this because he was relatively poor and probably had traveled very little when he wrote this poem at age 21.* But we know that he had a strong passion for literature. * John Keats is trying to tell us that he has traveled and explored the rich realms of literature.

¡§Oft on one wide expanse had I been told

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene¡¨

Some topics in this essay:
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