like some watcher of the skies

I was going to post Adonais, Percy Bysshe Shelley's elegy on the death of John Keats, because I was thinking about Keats, and I was thinking about Shelley, and I was thinking about elegies. I can't quite bring myself to do it, though. It's very long, and I actually hate most of it, despite the occasional moments of glory. And then I was thinking that I might post "Ozymandias," but Heather already did. And then I was thinking I might throw poet repetition to the winds and post "The Eve of St. Agnes" or Hyperion, but they're also very long. And then I thought, well, someone was talking about Petrarchan sonnets in the hall outside my office, this morning.

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.

~John Keats, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," Oct. 1816. I really, really love this poem, but it is probably worth mentioning that, though also occasionally glorious, Chapman's Homer is actually kind of crap. I don't think that really alters the beauty of the sonnet, however.