On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer Poem by John Keats

it's a good poem!

This poem is a celebration of the great impact that fine literature can have upon the reader. The 'realms of gold' and the states and kingdoms represent places that Keats has visited through his reading. The western islands are the isles in the area of Greece. Perhaps Keats had read some of Homer's writings in other translations, such as that of Dryden, but a friend had just exposed him to a much freer translation by an Elizabethan playwright named George Chapman, and the two friends spent most of a night reading it together with great delight. Keats wrote this sonnet early in the morning to express the depths of emotion that had been stirred up by Homer's classic. He compares the discovery of this new translation to the discovery of a new planet by an astronomer and to the first sighting of the Pacific Ocean from the Americas by a European. He makes a very famous error here by attributing the 'discovery' of the Pacific to Cortez, when in reality it was Balboa who first sighted the ocean, which he called the South Sea, from what is now Panama. Keats's friend immediately spotted the error, but Keats chose not to change the name because it would spoil the meter of the line. The mistake did nothing to lessen the effectiveness of Keats's expression of his joy at experiencing a great work of art in a new and exciting way.