When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer

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When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer The poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” written by Walt Whitman, illustrates an Astronomer lecturing about astronomy. The Astronomer later on uses the words “proofs” “figures” “charts and diagrams” for the listeners, who are there to test out that data. In the third line of the poem, Whitman states, “there he lectured with much applause in the lectured room” meaning his lecture was successful; as the astronomer got a positive response from the audience. In the fifth line of the poem, the speaker all of a sudden changes his mood to “tired and sick” and must leave the lecture classroom. Later on, I’m assuming, he recovers himself once he has left the classroom. He looks up at the sky, into the stars, and feels relieved. I’ve noticed that in the poem the speaker shifts from the probably stuffy classroom, with its facts, to fresh “mystical moist night-air.” I think that instead of hearing lectures from an astronomer and applause from the audience, he experiences “perfect silence” as a replacement for “charts and diagrams.” Whitman also keeps increasing the length of the lines in the first half of the poem. He keeps repeating the words and phrases “when” “heard the astronomer,” and “lecture.” I also noticed the repetition of “r” sounds in the poem; for example, “heard the learn’d astronomer.” Later on in the poem, the lines grow shorter and instead of the “r” sounds, Whitman uses more words with long “i” vowels like “rising,” “gliding,” “I,” “by myself,” “time to time,” “night,” and etc. In this poem, Whitman used two different moods at the same time by using two different sounds of the words he described them
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