Sense of Transportation in Keats

Although Keats does not physically travel anywhere in his poems, they do portray a sense of mental movement through the act of imagination. This is particularly evident in “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” in which he takes a cerebral journey through language into the epic landscape of Homer’s ancient Greece. He compares this first reading of Homer to discovering a new planet, or coming upon a new body of water, conjuring up images of adventure. He takes us from a boat at sea to soaring into the air all through the act of cerebration, working on us the same way that Homer worked on Keats' own senses. 

“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” also continues this theme of mental transportation, not just through landscapes, but also through time. In looking at the marble statues, Keats is transported within his imagination back to ancient Greece, when these pieces were constructed. In particular, the images at the end of the poem like the “dizzy pain”, “Grecian grandeur”, and the “billowy main” make me think being elevated, in this case being elevated on one of the grandest and most imposing constructions of the ancient world, the Acropolis. The “shadow of magnitude” could even be the shadow of the Parthenon, and more metaphorically the remnants of that grand civilization which are reflected in the marble works before him. In this way, Keats takes us on a full-circle mental journey through his poems, which allows us to explore how our own imaginations respond to the images he presents for us.