A summary and analysis of a classic John Keats poem by Dr Oliver Tearle
‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ is a sonnet composed by Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) in October 1816, when he was just 20 years old. The poem focuses on Keats’s initial encounter with an English translation of Homer’s poetry by George Chapman (c. 1559-1634), likening the experience to that of an astronomer discovering a new planet or an explorer sighting an unknown land.