[Poetry Friday] Walt Whitman and the Learn’d Astronomer

Fats here.

I am joining Poetry Friday today with a poem by Walt Whitman.  As we celebrate science and astronomy for our current theme, Black Holes and Parallel Universes: Marvels of Science and Speculative Fiction, I thought it is only fitting to share Whitman’s When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer. This poem was featured in the hit TV series, Breaking Bad, in which Gale Boetticher recited the poem by memory to impress Walter White.

Thank you Amy of The Poem Farm for hosting the poetry round-up this week!

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 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.