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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.
SUMMARY AND CRITICAL ANALYSIS
Introduction. This is a very short poem of eight lines. Although Walt Whitman has unreservedly accepted the essential utility and desirability of honouring positive sciences in the 23rd section of his long poem Song of Myself he has there itself made it clear that the realm of science cannot be his “dwelling”.
I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling.
This small poem gives us a preview of his confirmed attitude by means of a dramatic representation in as much as the poet becomes “tired and sick” of the matter-of-fact scientific lecture of a learned astronomer and silently walks out of the room and takes a stroll.
In the mystical moist night air and from time to timeLooked up in perfect silence at the stars.
Summary. In the poem When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer, learned astronomer was giving a splendid lecture with charts and diagrams to substantiate his theory. The audience was also well impressed as evidenced by the applause they gave him now and then. But the poet became tired and sick because he had no scientific approach to the stellar galaxy. He would like to view the stars with the naked eye and appreciate their grandeur and brilliance with a fanciful innocent approach of a layman interested in the natural majesty of all these.
Critical Analysis. Long before man gained a perfect mastery over the realm of nature, people with a keen insight into the mysterious loveliness and awe-inspiring magnificence of the moon, stars, etc., in the vast expanse of the firmament approached them with a sympathetic view of all-round appreciation and not an analytic readiness to grasp the underlying truth. The lines describing the lecture are superb despite their simplicity:
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns beforeme, 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-roomHow soon unaccountable I became tired and sick ...
Therefore the poet rose and glided out of the room to observe the stars in order to appreciate their beauty and mystery. The poet of the Earth wanted to identify himself with the “poetry of heaven”. We should not think that the poet nursed any animosity to science as being opposed to aesthetic imagination. The poet’s silent observation and detached contemplation indicates the dominant mood in him as the composer of the poems in the collection, By the Roadside.