Read the following poem by John Keats carefully before answering the question.
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer (1816)
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 star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
How does the structural shift (volta) between the octave (lines 1–8) and the sestet (lines 9–14) contribute to the development of the poem's theme?
- It transitions the poem from a retrospective account of the speaker's literary explorations to a vivid depiction of the immediate, awe-inspiring impact of a specific translation.Answer
- BIt shifts the narrative focus from the author's real-world travels in the Mediterranean to their subsequent career change.
- CIt identifies the specific similes of the astronomer and the explorer without relating them to the speaker's emotional state.
- DIt signals a failure to sustain a single, consistent tone of reverence throughout the poem.
- EIt creates a rigid pause at the end of each line in the sestet to show that the discovery is fragmented.