Why good translations matter

Sonnet by Keats, On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer. Keats was familiar with other translations of Homer, such as the one by Pope, but reading Chapman’s work was a different experience altogether:

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.

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