| When I heard the learn’d astronomer; | |
| When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; | |
| When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; | |
| When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, | |
| How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; | 5 |
| Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, | |
| In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, | |
| Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. Pretty little thing; I don't ordinarily enjoy Whitman, and I'm not sure exactly how to take this one, rather, how far I can extend its apparent meaning. Is Whitman simply denouncing an over-intellectualized approach to astronomy, or to the study of nature in general? Can I take this message to the door of Theology? To intellectualism in general? No matter what, there is something lingering in this poem that I am sure the Transcendentalists would have eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner. |
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