On First Looking into Chapman's Homer Literary Elements

first person speaker, presumably Keats himself

Petrarchan sonnet, iambic pentameter

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies/ When a new planet swims into his ken;" (simile)

"Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes/ He star'd at the Pacific—..." (simile)

"Oft of one wide expanse had I been told"
Repetition of "of," long "o," and "d" sounds

"Yet never did I breathe its pure serene"
Repetition of long "e" sounds

Romantic poetry, sonnet

We don't know where exactly the speaker is, but the places he describes exist in Homer's epic universe.

awestruck, sublime, reverent

the poem's protagonist is the speaker; there is no antagonist

The poem's major conflict manifests in the speaker's relationship to the past: reading Chapman's translation of Homer forces him to revise his impression of Homer's work.

The poem's climax occurs in line 8, when the speaker anticipates his epiphany upon encountering Chapman's translations for the first time.

The speaker foreshadows the poem's turn in lines 7 and 8, with transitionary words like "Yet" and "Till."

Keat's sonnet is filled with allusions: lines 1-4, in which the speaker describes his travels to "realms of gold," refer to Odysseus' journey in The Illiad and The Odyssey, then lines 10-14 look to Cortez, a 16th-century Spanish explorer known for his expeditions to Central America. Likewise, the "peak in Darien" refers to a mountain in Central America.

Chapman's impact upon the speaker borders on hyperbole: the speaker's wonder at reading Chapman's translations, like an astronomer discovering a new planet or Cortez surveying the Pacific, is exaggerated to express the profound effect of Chapman's voice.