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 (1819–1892)