On First Looking into Chapman's
Homer
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Much have I travelled in the realms of
gold, |
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And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; |
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Round many
western Islands have I been |
| Which bards in
fealty to Apollo hold. |
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Oft of one wide expanse had I been told |
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That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; |
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Yet never did I breathe its pure serene |
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Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: |
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Then felt I like some watcher of the skies |
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When a new planet swims into his ken; |
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Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
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He stared at the Pacific - and all his men |
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Looked at each other with a wild surmise |
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Silent, upon a peak in Darien. |
Annotations
| Chapman was a translator of Homer who wrote
about the time of Shakespeare; Keats was therefore reading a book
already 200 years old. |
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| Homer If you've really had to look this up,
there's no hope for you. Homer was the father of Western Literature and
wrote to epic poems in Greek about 3,000 years ago. Keats was, of
course, hugely influenced by ancient Greece. |
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| travelled Obviously he doesn't mean it
literally. He's been reading - an activity I recommend to you all. |
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| western islands Sadly not the "Western
Isles" of Scotland, but the islands of the Western Mediterranean.
Homer set the Odyssey in what was, to him, completely
unknown territory around North Africa and Italy |
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| Fealty to Apollo This is your cue - If I said
that "bards" is another word for "poets" and
'fealty' means that Apollo was their landlord, you have to find out who
Apollo was and why he might be a poet's landlord. |
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| demesne means Homer's bit of territory - he
ruled there with Apollo as his landlord. This is, of course, a metaphor. |
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| Cortez was a Spaniard who led his troops
across Central America. He was not the first European to see the
Pacific Ocean, which adds to Keats's point - he is not the first person
to discover Homer's poetry. |
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