John keats "on first looking into chapman's homer".

Although Keats knew no Greek, he loved Greek mythology. When he was about twenty-one, he borrowed a translation of Homer by George Chapman, an Elizabethan poet, and he and a lifelong friend, Charles C. Clarke, sat up till daylight reading it - " Keats shouting with delight as some passages of energy struck his imagination." The next morning his friend found this sonnet on his breakfast table.

Much have I travelled 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 1 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 started at the Pacific - and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

1. What kinds of experiences are described in the first four lines? What is the imagery of the poem?

2. What is described as "realms of gold"? Why does the poet consider the area to be the domain of Apollo? Why Apollo?

3. Find the example of synecdoche and explain it.

4. Find the example of simile.

5. What is the central idea of the poem?

John keats

“WHEN I HAVE FEARS”

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,

Before high-piled books, in charactery,

Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

That I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love;- then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think

Till love and fame to nothingless do sink.

William wordsworth "london, 1802".

Milton! Thou should 'st be living at this hour;

England hath need of thee; she is a fen

Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,

Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,

Have forfeited their ancient English dower

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;

Oh! Raise us up, return to us again;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea;

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life 's common way,

In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay

1. What aspects of English national life are suggested by the four examples of metonymy in the first stanza?

2. What lines elevate Milton to the exalted stature of one worthy of emulation?

3. What, judging by this sonnet, would you say is the kind of reform Wordsworth sees as possible?

4. Why does the sound of "dwelt apart " make these words better convey their meaning than would another phrase, for instance "lived alone", which would mean the same thing?

5. What sounds in line 10 aptly echo a "voice whose sound was like the sea"?