On First Looking into Chapman's Homer Summary

The speaker fondly reflects upon his literary voyages through the "realms of gold" and "many goodly states and kingdoms" of Homer's epics, The Illiad and The Odyssey, a source of inspiration and pleasure for many poets like himself. He believed he had already seen the full expanse of Homer's world, until he encountered George Chapman's translations of the Greek bard's work. In Chapman's verse, Homer's epics become new again. The speaker, eyes opened to the newly profound depth of the epics' universe, encounters the work with a new sense of wonder.