On first looking into Chapman's Homer (John Kilpatrick)

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• (Posted 2003-10-12)  CPDL #05671:  PDF, MIDI, XML & MuseScore files

Editor: John Kilpatrick (submitted 2003-10-12).   Revised 2020-04-05

Score information: A4, 16 pages, 230 kB   Music part 12 pages Copyright: Personal

Edition notes: Includes a keyboard reduction of the a cappella choral score.

General Information

Title: On first looking into Chapman's Homer
Composer: John Kilpatrick
Lyricist: John Keats

Number of voices: 4vv   Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong

Language: English
Instruments: A cappella

First published: 2003 revised 2020
Description: Now published as part of Two Homer Sonnets

Original text and translations

English text

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 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.