I’m going to analyze the poem When I Heard The Learnt Astronomer by Walt Whitman. The title resumes the whole story told by the poem. The poem is arranged in ten different length lines. The initial three lines start with “When”, to insert each action in time. The fourth line has got a unique word “then”, maybe to separate two different parts of narration. The same for the 6^th line, where “the lecture-room” make the line helps the reader to imagine the space where the poem develops. Punctuation is large used: in the end of every line there’s a comma to let the reader stop the reading after a long line. The language belongs to scientific field, such as “astronomer” or “charts”: indeed the poem deals with an astronomer. There are not figures of speech, there is only the repetition of “when” at the beginning of the initial lines. On the phonological level the reader reads slowly, due to the difficult language and the verse’s length, and the great quantity of open vowel makes the reader imagine a mysterious atmosphere. Thinking about this considerations, the message conveys that the poet is amazed in front of the astronomer: he finds fascinated and mystical the work of the astronomer, between charts and the moist night-air. The reader hasn’t got many ways to criticize what he read, but he can only imagine the situation and agree with the poet that astronomer is a curious and fascinated work.

think

O.E. þencan "conceive in the mind, think, consider, intend" (past tense þohte, p.p. geþoht), probably originally "cause to appear to oneself," from P.Gmc. *thankjan (cf. O.Fris. thinka, O.S. thenkian, O.H.G. denchen, Ger. denken, O.N. þekkja, Goth. þagkjan); O.E. þencan is the causative form of the distinct O.E. verb þyncan "to seem or appear" (past tense þuhte, pp. geþuht), from P.Gmc. *thunkjan (cf. Ger. dünken, däuchte). Both are from PIE *tong- "to think, feel" which also is the root of thought and thank. The two meanings converged in M.E. and þyncan "to seem" was absorbed, except for archaic methinks "it seems to me." Jocular pp. thunk (not historical, but by analogy of drink, sink, etc.) is recorded from 1876.