As is the case with the sonnet form, this sonnet is in fourteen lines. The rhyme scheme may vary in different tyes of sonnet, and Keats her uses a scheme of ABBA CDCDCD. The Shakespearian sonnet would normally end with a couplet, but Keats does not do that, effectively using two quatrains followed by a six-line conclusion. The meter for the sonnet is iambic pentameter, with variations that emphasize words and thoughts. For instance, line 10 is "When a new planet swims into his ken," a line that is hard to read in strict iambic pentameter and that begins with a trochee, an accented followed by an unaccented syllable, followed by a spondee, with two accented syllables. Lines 9 and 10 are thought to refer to the discovery of a new planet by Herschel, which Keats knew about at the time. Line 14 also begins with a trochee, emphasizing the word "Silent," which is also set apart by the comma that comes after it and separates it from the explanatory "upon a peak in Darien."

Keats does not use internal rhyme in this poem and uses no alliteration. He does use repeated sounds to link certain wards, such as the "d" in "deep-brow'd Homer" and "demesne," liking ruler and ruled in the same line. Homer as ruler also links to the use of terms like "state and kingdoms" in line 2 and "wide expanse" in line 5, all of which could be part of Homer's demesne. Homer is the ruler, and the world of poetry and of the "realms of gold" are his demesne. Chapman has made that demesne more beautiful and more meaningful with his translation, and this is what Keats is celebrating in this poem.

However, more than Chapman's accomplishment, Keats is celebrating his own discovery of that accomplishment and of the world it opens for him. All of the references to discovery and to the demesne of Homer keeps...

Just as Chapman has shown Homer to Keats in a different way, so is Keats able to recount this for the reader and show the reader how to follow the same path to achieve the same sort of insight Keats has reached. Doing so would also take the individual into the same world of discovery experienced by explorers like Cortex, astronomers like Herschel, poets like Homer, and later poets like Chapman and Keats. The voyage of self-discovery that is involved can also be taken ay anyone looking into Chapman's Homer or the work of any other great poet.
This poem, of course, is written as an immediate response to the revelation experienced by Keats on first reading Chapman's Homer, so it has a certain excitement expressed by the poet because of what he has just discovered. This leads him to want to make more discoveries about himself and about the world and to delve more deeply into the ancient demesnes he has not understood well before this. The sonnet form allows him to shape an argument from one stanze to the next and to do so as if speaking on the spur of the moment, though the argument is carefully shaped and well-designed to convey the information and excitement the poet has discovered. One of the key elements of Romanticism is an emphasis on the need for spontaneity in thought and action and in the expression of thought, and Keats shows this trait clearly in this sonnet. Another Romantic element is a tendency to exalt the individual and his or her needs and an emphasis on the need for a freer and more personal expression, and for Keats, this is what Chapman has done and why Homer is the great poet in the pantheon of ancient poetry.