When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

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.    

This poem composed by Walt Whitman talks about writer’s reaction in front of an astronomy lecture full of figures, charts and diagrams.

In front of all this the poet feels tired and sick and suddenly decides to go out and he starts observing the infinity of the space with his natural eyes.

Reading  the title you may notice that the poem is about astronomy and describes the experience of the poet while hearing an astronomer’s conference/lesson.

The tense  is a past simple, so the poet remembers a past experience.

The use of the perception verb hear suggest the lack of involvement of the listener to the lesson.

The poem starts with the repetition of the title to give more weight to the first phrase that expresses the initial condition of the poet.

The second line starts again with the word “when” that makes the sense of boredom felt by poet.

This word is repeated on the beginning of the first 4 lines and it increases its power and heaviness.

You may also notice that the first line is relatively short but the next one is longer than the first and this increase continues with the 3^rd and 4^th lines.

(So the writer uses free verse.)

This device is used to show the growing complexity of the astronomer's explanation, and the relative speaker’s tiredness and sickness.

The words  “proofs” , “figures” ,“columns”, “charts”, “diagrams”, “to add”, “divide” in the 3^rd and 4^th are also used to emphasize this effect and also to mark the scientific sphere.

In the 4^th line you can see a change that breaks the scheme and introduces to the last part of the composition.

In the last 4 lines the poet changes completely the subject and the scheme.

He uses words like “mystical”, “moist”, “silence”, “perfect” that create a contrast with those used in the first lines.

Personal opinion

The scientific conception of astronomy and figures cannot allow you to solve all the mystery of the space. Astronomy is only a tool that help us understand the mathematical form of the universe. The science can quantify and measure the components but only with a different prospective you can understand the beauty  and the infinity of the universe. So the emotions that the poet feels looking at the star can’t be quantified with a mathematical approach.