Saturday 29 April 2017

Dead Poets Society #36 Walt Whitman: When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer



When I heard the Learn’d 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 the 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.


Unfortunately, compressing the lines to fit in the blog post ruins the effect of the build-up to the longest line...

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