Question

Then I felt I like some watcher of the skies/ when a new planet swims into his ken. This excerpt from on first looking into chapmans homer is an example of a(n)

Answer 1

I would say that "I felt like some watcher of the skies" is comparing something with something else so it looks like a simile though we don't know what is being compared with. though actually the poem by Keats seems to discuss what explorers saw in the time of Cortez so it is related to this,

Answer 2

The excerpt is an example of a simile.

A simile is a figurative language that aims to make the writing more colorful and interesting by using comparisons to describe an event, someone, a trait, a place, etc. And we can normally identify a simile because it has the words "like", "as" and "as in" in the sentence.

In the excerpt, the narrator uses this type of figurative language as he or she is comparing him or her self as a "watcher of the sky", and we can know for sure that it is not an example of hyperbole or metaphor because the sentence has the distinctive "like" of similes.