As rebels of the industrial era, Romantic poets cultivated their reverence for the natural world, and shared the reverence in their poems. In "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer", Whitman narrates his experience of depressed by the astronomer’s lecture and pleased again by looking at the stars himself. In “324” Dickinson tells within nature she can hear from God and go to heaven without the need of going to church. Though they use different poetic devices, they both express the similar…
In Whitman's “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” he paints a verbal picture of appreciating learning from experience. In lines one and two, he inundates you with heavy words like proofs, figures, charts, and diagrams that are all very strong and authoritively describing his learning experience in a lecture room. He grows "tired" and "sick" of this sense of confinement. Feeling captive and stagnant in this conventional learning environment, he longs to, instead of just reading the facts and…
Whitman was an inspirational poet who mainly focuses on the ideas of Transcendentalism and Romanticism. These ideals show in the poem "When I heard the learn'd astronomer". This poem focuses on the importance of appreciating nature and is beneficial to those people who spend most of their time indoors. The poem "When I heard the learned astronomer" is explaining the issues that arise when people only view the world in an intellectual way. Whitman is not saying that learning is bad or a waste…
In this free verse poem, the narrator is observing the astronomer give a lecture about outer space and the mathematics and science behind it. While the other’s in the lecture hall are enjoying this second-hand learning experience being offered to them, the narrator seems extremely disinterested. We know that…
Some may argue that people interact with nature in an overall positive way because of the poem titled, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman, and how it shows that humans interact with nature in a positive way. However, when people do interact with nature, it is usually in a negative way and they tend to take the Earth and all it has to offer for granted, as shown in “My Life as a Bat” by Margaret Atwood, because people's feelings for bats are almost always negative, as well as…
The Questionable Science of Learning Ideas and concepts that many scientists and new age astronomers produce can make a person, tiresome of trying to understand if the listener is determined to learn on his own accord. This forestall can make a mind unaccountable of its learning abilities, making them “tired and sick” (5). In Walter Whitmans, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” the speaker gives an insight to a character who is perplexed trying to learn from a scholarly lecture but soon is…
“ When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” is a poem in which Walt Whitman, the author, talks about an astronomer’s lecture and how the narrator had gotten lost in the said astronomer’s lecture. The narrator explains things that he/she envisioned during the lecture and how he/she reacted mentally to the things said by the astronomer in his lecture. Like a lot of his other writings, Whitman wrote this poem in free verse. This poem consists of one stanza with eight lines. The first four lines of this…
Walt Whitman’s poem, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” which is written based on prior experience, presents two different views based around focusing on how people understand certain material. These perspectives are exhibited through a class lecture on astronomy. Whitman wrote this poem based on prior experience. The poem begins with the speaker sitting through an astronomy lecture taught by an astronomer. The lesson focuses on scientific facts and mathematical figures. The information is…
The Natural World The poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman is talking about him listening to an educated astronomer lecture using his proofs, figures, columns, charts, diagrams and how to add, divide, and measure them. While he was sitting in the lecture room with that astronomer teaching, the rest of the room began to applause. It seemed to be too much for him because he became unaccountably tired and sick. He felt that way until he left the room and went outside and…
Being the most undiscovered place, besides the ocean, the planets, the stars, the galaxies, the entire universe has been around and will be around for as long as we know it. Everyday, the place we know as “space” continues to astonish astronomers with new findings and new developments as it keeps expanding day by day. After examining several career opportunities, in order to obtain a career in astronomy, one must consider the financial obligations of college, professional growth and finances and…