Ok, Keats moment.

I started studying for the GRE Subject Test today. Several people have told me that the best way to do this is to read all the introductions to the Norton Anthology. Yikes! So, I carted my 11th-grade copy of the Norton English Major Authors Sixth Edition to England, and opened it today to the preface. Have read so far up to the fourteenth century, and am thinking it would be nice to learn Old English. But getting distracted, I flipped forward to page 1770, John Keats, and even though I've read this sonnet many times, it drew tears to my eyes, so I'm going to reproduce it here, for reading and rereading:

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 demense;
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.

Chills! It's the sextet that does me in. I think it really captures the feeling of reading. I mean, who hasn't felt like that? If anyone has, I pity them.

And while we're on the subject of Keats and reading, I just have to add this. The last sonnet was about first readings, and this is about rereadings. Which reminds me, there's a new Anne Fadiman book of -- I think -- that title, but sadly it's edited by her and not entirely her work. :( If anyone hasn't read Ex Libris, you must, you must. So.

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
O golden-tongued Romance, with serene lute!
Fair plumed syren, queen of far-away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute.
Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute
Betwixt damnation and impassioned clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearean fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme!
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream:
But, when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

Mmm. Actually, for me, this poem itself is redolent of re-readings. Particularly the first few lines as I read them sound in my head in the voice of Eamon G---, my Irish poetry professor. So they take me back to sitting around a table in Rocky in the late afternoon light--acutally, rather like the light right now (it's 6pm here) -- and rediscovering Keats. I was rediscovering the poem even then because I'd read it before. Oh, rereadings. The well-worn joy.

So, this isn't newsy either, but it proves that I'm in the right place, eh?