When I heard the learn’d astronomer

Reading the title, I expected the poem be about someone who was hearing an astronomer’s lesson. In the title the most stressed words are when, heard and learn’d, so we understand they’re the most important words in the title. The word “when pinpoints that the action was in progress at a specific time in the past, so the reader is curious to find out what was happened in this time.

The poem is arranged into one stanza, thus, it was written in free verse and it hasn’t a regular pattern. Reading the poem, the intelligent reader immediately notice that the first four lines start with the word “when” and that these limes become longer and longer.

In the first four lines the speaking voice tells about one day in the past he/she heard an astronomer’s lecture, he was showing some diagrams, figures and proofs. He/she tells also that there was a lot of people in the room, that enjoy the lecture, because they applause. In the other four lines the speaking voice tells about what’s his/her reaction to the lecture, He/she didn’t appreciate the lesson, felt tired and sick and glided instinctively out.

Because of the use of an anaphora (the repetition of when in the first four lines) the free verse of the poem seems to be arranged into two parts, in the first is presented the starting situation, the speaking voice is hearing the lesson, in the second is described the reaction of the speaking voice to the lesson.

immediately in the first verse the title is repeated, maybe because it’s the sentence that represents all the poem, so it’s put in the title, but it’s also the first situation in the story narrated. There’s also the use of a consonance, in the first verse and in the title with the repletion of the sound nd, that underlines the words learn’d and heard, that are two of the stressed words in the title.

the message of poetry is that you can know things through two different approaches: the rational and the emotional.