Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology

Mapping Keats’s Progress
A Critical Chronology

References to this poem

On First Looking into Chapman’s 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.

× Cite this page:

MLA Style: Works Cited

Keats, John. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, by G. Kim Blank. Edition 3.29 , University of Victoria, 26 October 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_on_first_looking_into_chapmans_homer.html.

Chicago Style: Note

John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.29 , last modified 26th October 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_on_first_looking_into_chapmans_homer.html.

Chicago Style: Bibliography

Keats, John. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.29 , last modified 26th October 2026. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/poem_on_first_looking_into_chapmans_homer.html.