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MDonat - The Learned Astronomer. Analysis.
by - (2011-10-04)
Up to 5C - Methodological Module for Textual Analysis
"When I Heard The Learned Astronomer" is a lyric poem with a single stanza of eight lines.
Lines 1 to 4 consist of four subordinate clauses that establish the situation in which the speaker (narrator) finds himself. Lines 4 to 8 consist of a main clause followed by a subordinate clause. Lines 4 to 8 present the speaker's response to the situation presented in Lines 1 to 4. The first of the four subordinate "when" clauses in the first half is relatively short. The second is longer than the first, the third longer than the second, and the fourth longer than the third, perhaps to reflect the growing complexity of the astronomer's explanation, which makes the speaker "tired and sick." Lines 4 to 8, on the other hand, are short by comparison, the last line being the shortest in this section of the poem, perhaps to reflect the simplicity of the speaker's approach to appreciating and understanding the stars.
A person must sometimes separate himself from the crowd to experience life and the cosmos from a different perspective. He must become an individual willing to abandon the herd to roam freely in open pastures. In the last three lines of the poem, the speaker does so. When he wanders alone in the mystical moist night-air, he looks up but does not see the wonders of celestial mechanics, he sees stars.
Whitman wrote the poem in free verse.
The first four lines of this poem all begin with the same word, constituting an anaphora.
There are also some alliteration that made the reader focused on that points: heard, learned, heard; room, soon; rising, gliding.
The message of the poem is to leave nature as is and to not take nature apart into pieces and make it systematic. Romanticism is the main influence of the poem as shown in the diction of the words myself and mystical.
Lines 1 to 4 consist of four subordinate clauses that establish the situation in which the speaker (narrator) finds himself. Lines 4 to 8 consist of a main clause followed by a subordinate clause. Lines 4 to 8 present the speaker's response to the situation presented in Lines 1 to 4. The first of the four subordinate "when" clauses in the first half is relatively short. The second is longer than the first, the third longer than the second, and the fourth longer than the third, perhaps to reflect the growing complexity of the astronomer's explanation, which makes the speaker "tired and sick." Lines 4 to 8, on the other hand, are short by comparison, the last line being the shortest in this section of the poem, perhaps to reflect the simplicity of the speaker's approach to appreciating and understanding the stars.
A person must sometimes separate himself from the crowd to experience life and the cosmos from a different perspective. He must become an individual willing to abandon the herd to roam freely in open pastures. In the last three lines of the poem, the speaker does so. When he wanders alone in the mystical moist night-air, he looks up but does not see the wonders of celestial mechanics, he sees stars.
Whitman wrote the poem in free verse.
The first four lines of this poem all begin with the same word, constituting an anaphora.
There are also some alliteration that made the reader focused on that points: heard, learned, heard; room, soon; rising, gliding.
The message of the poem is to leave nature as is and to not take nature apart into pieces and make it systematic. Romanticism is the main influence of the poem as shown in the diction of the words myself and mystical.