When I Heard the Learned Astronomer
by Walt Whitman
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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4 comments:
i did a painting based on that text many years ago, it's one of my favorites. a great one when talking to graduate students who are consumed by theory!
why won't you show us???
so strange. so similar. almost same.
I recently viewed a PBS broadcast about Whitman and the social repression of his era as contrasted by the unique genius of his expression. -That someone of Whitman's originality was felt to need the approval of bourgeois writers such as Emerson or Thoreau. I won't get started. There are times when I feel that art is a vampire sucking up essential consciousness and life energy of real artists, and spitting their bones out. It can be such a savage process and yet illuminating. This is how I read Whitman and not usually so early in the morning.
Thanks for a post that got me thinking.
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