🔭 WONDERFUL WORDS: Watchers of the Skies

Have you noticed that many of our regular homeschool astronomy posts are headed “Watchers of the Skies”? If you didn’t know where that title came from, today you’ll find out. (Everything fits together here in the River Houses.)

The shortest month of the year is already winding down. Why not send it off with a literary flourish by introducing your students to one of the most famous poems in the English language: “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats (1795–1821). It’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February.

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

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 never did I 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.

The “Chapman” of the title is George Chapman (ca. 1599–1634), an Elizabethan writer and Classical scholar, and this poem is an account of Keats’ first reading of Chapman’s English translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The story — a wonderful one to share — is that Keats was introduced to Chapman’s translation by his friend Charles Cowden Clarke (1787–1877), and the two young men stayed up all evening reading it aloud to each other. The next morning, when Clarke came down to breakfast, he found this sonnet waiting for him on the breakfast table.

Encourage your students to look at the poem’s structure even before they try to work out its meaning. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a perfectly crafted example of a sonnet, and in particular, of a Petrarchan sonnet: fourteen lines, thematically arranged into an initial group of eight (the octave) and a final group of six (the sestet). Invite your students to map out the rhyme scheme and see how tight it is: ABBA ABBA CD CD CD. The first eight lines tell of the writer’s prior experience in “realms of gold” — the imaginary (literary) landscape of ancient gods and kings and poets. He had been told that the greatest of the ancient poets was Homer, but it was not until he read Chapman’s translation — Keats could not read the original Greek — that he truly understood why this was so. And at that point the sonnet makes a turn (called a volta in Italian): reading Chapman was like discovering a new planet, or a new ocean he had never seen before.

There’s some beautiful vocabulary here for your students to work through in your family dictionary: realms, bards, fealty, demesne, ken, surmise — wonderful words every one. The planet Uranus was discovered in 1781 and the minor planet Ceres was discovered in 1801, so the discovery of new planets was very much a matter of public interest in Keats’ day. Unfortunately, Keats’ historical geography was a bit off: the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa (ca. 1475–1519) — not Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) — was the first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama (Darien) and to see the Pacific Ocean (rather than Asia as expected). But Keats can be forgiven: it’s a poem, not a history text.

There are a great many recordings of this sonnet available online. Here’s a good one that will help your students get the pronunciation (and so the rhymes) correct:

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” has been one of the most widely read, taught, and quoted sonnets in the English language for almost two hundred years. This week, invite your young scholars to enter into that inheritance and make Keats their friend for life.

What wonderful words and poetical productions have you been studying in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 🔭

❡ Upon your Easter bonnet: Can your students recognize a sonnet? It’s one of the most intricate forms used in traditional poetry, and we read four beautiful ones each year: “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” “May and the Poets,” “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” and “August.” For an excellent literary lesson, print all four of them out and have your students see what similarities and differences they can find. (Hint: fourteen lines is one of the main clues.) 📖

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the Romantic Movement in art and literature, the movement with which Keats is commonly associated, turn to page 338 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 📚

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 📫

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

❡ Support our work: If you enjoy our educational materials, please support us by starting your regular Amazon shopping from our very own homeschool teaching supplies page. When you click through from our page, any purchase you make earns us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping us to keep going and growing! 🛒

❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡