On First Looking Into Chapman's "Homer."
"On First Looking Into Chapman's 'Homer,'" by John Keats (1795- 1821). The last four lines of this sonnet form the most tremendous climax in literature. The picture is as vivid as if done with a brush. Every great book, every great poem is a new world, an undiscovered country. Every learned person is a whole territory, a universe of new thought. Every one who does anything with a heart for it, every specialist every one, however simple, who is strenuous and genuine, is a "new discovery." Let us give credit to the smallest planet that is true to its own orbit.
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 stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
John Keats.
Hervé Riel.
"Hervé Riel" (by Robert Browning, 1812-89) is a poem for older boys. Here is a hero who does a great deed simply as a part of his day's work. He puts no value on what he has done, because he could have done no other way.
On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two,
