Sonnet XI On First Looking Into Chapmans Homer

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:
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.'Charles Cowden Clarke says, in the article in The Gentleman's Magazine [Feb. 1874], that this sonnet was sent to him by Keats so as to reach him at 10 o'clock one morning when they two had parted "
at day-spring" after a night encounter with a copy of Chapman's Homer belonging to Mr.

Alsager of The Times.

Mr.

F.

Locker possess an undated manuscript of the sonnet in Keast's writing, headed "On the first looking into Chapman's Homer;" while in Tom Keats's copy-book the heading is "Sonnet on looking into Chapman's Homer," and the date "1816."~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed.

H.

Buxton Forman,

Crowell publ. 1895.