Structure
This poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, or can be known as an Italian sonnet, divided into an octave and a sestet, with a rhyme scheme of a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a-c-d-c-d-c-d. After the main idea has been introduced and the image played upon in the octave, the poem undergoes a volta, a change in the persona's train of thought. The volta, typical of Italian sonnets, is put very effectively to use by Keats as he refines his previous idea. While the octave offers the poet as a literary explorer, the volta brings in the discovery of Chapman's Homer, the subject of which is further expanded through the use of imagery and comparisons which convey the poet's sense of awe at the discovery.
As is typical of sonnets in English, the meter is iambic pentameter, though not all of the lines scan perfectly (line 12 has an extra syllable, for example).
Read more about this topic: On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“... the structure of our public morality crashed to earth. Above its grave a tombstone read, “Be tolerant—even of evil.” Logically the next step would be to say to our commonwealth’s criminals, “I disagree that it’s all right to rob and murder, but naturally I respect your opinion.” Tolerance is only complacence when it makes no distinction between right and wrong.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)
“Communism is a proposition to structure the world more reasonably, a proposition for changing the world. As such, we have to analyze it and, if we deem it reasonable, act upon it.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)