When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer / Walt Whitman

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 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.

~~
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
from Drum-taps, 1865

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Walt Whitman biography

"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" read by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Courtesy American Museum of Natural History.