Walt Whitman's sprawling eight-line poem showcases the poet's freewheeling style while dramatizing the wildly romantic worldview portrayed in almost all of his poems.
Study in Contrasts
Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” provides a study in contrasts between science and poetry. The speaker makes his preference known that he favors looking at the stars over studying them.
The speaker is a romantic individual who is more interested in the life of the senses than the life of the mind. The speaker prefers to indulge his fancy rather than pay attention to the measured distances between heavenly bodies.
Lines 1-4
The first four lines are adverbial “when” clauses: when he listened to the lecture, when the numbers were presented, when “the charts and the diagrams” were shown, when he heard the audience’s cheer the “learn’d astronomer.”
There is an interesting riddle associated with using “when” as an adverbial conjunction: the riddle asks the question, “When the man jumped off the bridge, where was he?” If one answers, he was in the air until he hit the water, the riddler responds, but that was “after” he jumped. Then one rejoins, he was still on the bridge, to which the riddler replies, but that was “before” he jumped.
The riddle remains a riddle, but it is instructive for language users, especially for poets: the use of “when” as an adverbial conjunction causes an ambiguity that should be revised by using a more specific term.
Whitman, who is so savvy in most of his poetic language use, really fumbled it here by repeating the adverbial conjunction “when” four times, when he obviously means “after.” It was, in fact, after he had heard the astronomer, after he had seen the numbers, after he has observed the charts, and after he heard the others applauding the lecturer that he grew “tired and sick” and decided the leave.
Lines 5-8
So, after the speaker had listened to a portion of the lecture, he gets up and leaves the lecture hall, goes out into the refreshing night air and looks up at the stars. The event is simple, but the speaker’s dramatic portrayal of his actions enhances the act and makes it so much more interesting and meaningful than the mere event.
For example, the use of the word “unaccountable” contrasts with all the counting that was going on by the lecturer. The speaker is simply remarking that he grew “tired and sick” while listening, but he does not know why. He seems to have no reason for this reaction. He is cleverly leaving that reasoning up the reader to discern, after he paints his portrait of natural beauty in the final three lines.
He says, “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.” These lines contrast the stuffy lecture hall with the lushness of the great outdoors; they contrast the enjoyment of being alone as opposed to being surrounded by people in the stuffy lecture hall. The night air is “mystical”—the speaker is carried to a transcendental height by the simple “moist night-air.”
And the best of all he saves for the last; in contrast to the steady pace of the lecture, he leisurely “from time to time”—no hurry, no schedule, no following someone else’s line of thought—gazes up into the heavens and observes the brilliance of the stars themselves, instead of merely hearing about them through charts, diagrams, and numbers.
