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19th century America American American Poetry Celebration English Life Literature nature Poetry Uncategorized United States Walt Whitman

Poem: “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer” by Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)


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 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,
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.

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