On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer describes the speaker’s reaction to Homer, the translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey by George Chapman. The “realms of gold” and “godly states and kingdoms” (line 1-2) the speaker refers to in the first stanza describes the many poems he has read in his lifetime. They were rich in culture, meaning and intellectual thought. His idea of travel alludes to the Iliad because it recounts the process it was for the Greek to siege the city of Troy in the Trojan war. It was long and arduous but the Greeks succeed. After a long journey, the speaker finds a piece of literature that changes his views on life in general. “Many western islands” (3) evoke a calm and serene feeling to the readers as the poems the
