Some of Me Poetry

It's National Poetry Day! – so to celebrate, here's one of my favourite short poems, John Keats's 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer', which he wrote when he was just 21:

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-browed 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.

I like this poem because I think it conveys ably the sense of wonder a reader can feel on encountering a new literary experience. I've never read Chapman's translation of Homer myself, but there've been plenty of other things that have made me feel 'like some new planet swam into my ken'. Structurally, the poem is a great example of how to write a Petrarchan sonnet, and takes good advantage of the two parts of the form to make the point of its story. But most importantly, the closing image is to me a fantastically powerful one. (Arthur Ransome must have thought so too, as he uses it repeatedly in the Swallows and Amazons books.)

It is perhaps slightly unfortunate that it was actually Balboa, not Cortez, who led the first European expedition to look upon the Pacific. But we can forgive Keats that.

Finally, here's the same thing in the form of a limerick, even more concise:

There once was a Homer translation,
That showed me a novel sensation:
Like Cortez's men,
Standing on Darien,
I breathed the serene of Creation.

Some of Me Poetry

It's National Poetry Day! – so to celebrate, here's one of my favourite short poems, John Keats's 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer', which he wrote when he was just 21:

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-browed 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.

I like this poem because I think it conveys ably the sense of wonder a reader can feel on encountering a new literary experience. I've never read Chapman's translation of Homer myself, but there've been plenty of other things that have made me feel 'like some new planet swam into my ken'. Structurally, the poem is a great example of how to write a Petrarchan sonnet, and takes good advantage of the two parts of the form to make the point of its story. But most importantly, the closing image is to me a fantastically powerful one. (Arthur Ransome must have thought so too, as he uses it repeatedly in the Swallows and Amazons books.)

It is perhaps slightly unfortunate that it was actually Balboa, not Cortez, who led the first European expedition to look upon the Pacific. But we can forgive Keats that.

Finally, here's the same thing in the form of a limerick, even more concise:

There once was a Homer translation,
That showed me a novel sensation:
Like Cortez's men,
Standing on Darien,
I breathed the serene of Creation.