Whitman for Wednesday

I really love this poem. I love the language of it. I love the juxtposition of the earth-bound astronomy professor, tied to his proofs and figures and diagrams and lecture room and audience, and the quiet of the stars, offering the more perfect education.

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 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. --Walt Whitman