1Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
2And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
3Round many western islands have I been
4Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
5Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
6That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
7Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
8Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
9Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
10When a new planet swims into his ken;
11Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
12He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
13Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
14Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
"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.
The speaker has traveled through lands full of treasure and visited numerous countries and kingdoms. The speaker has sailed to islands in the west, where poets are loyal to Greek god Apollo.
The speaker had heard a lot about the imaginative world presided over by the genius Greek poet, Homer. But this world was never truly brought to life until the speaker read the translations of George Chapman, which seemed to speak to him loudly and proudly.
Reading Chapman's translation of Homer's work, the speaker felt like an astronomer witnessing a new planet slide into view. This experience was also like the kind of awe felt by the explorer Cortez when he looked out at the Pacific Ocean, when he and the men under his command fell silent, standing on a mountain peak in the Darien region of Panama.
John 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.
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.
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.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Unlock all 318 words of this analysis of Lines 5-6 of “On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
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Get LitCharts A+Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
"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.
"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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
Keats's Letters — An online resource containing all of Keats's correspondence.
A Review of Keats's Poetry — A review from 1818 published in Blackwood's Magazine, showcasing some of the literary establishment's prejudices against Keats.
Chapman's Odyssey — George Chapman's actual translation of one of Homer's works, The Odyssey.
Keats's Character — This a collection of descriptions of Keats by his contemporaries.