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When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer | Introduction

Walt Whitman, whose name is synonymous with the United States and who continues to be widely considered America’s greatest romantic poet, was inspired in a variety of ways by the Civil War. Many of the poems in Drum-Taps (1865), for example, a collection that was instrumental in establishing Whitman as a spokesperson for his country, deal directly with the fierce struggle between the Union and the Confederacy. However, this collection also included a number of poems with broad stylistic and thematic innovations only indirectly related to the conflict. Diverse explorations of Whitman’s powerful and musical poetic voice, these poems were later incorporated into a variety of sections of Whitman’s most important work, Leaves of Grass, which he revised and released in various editions throughout his life.

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” which is included in the “By the Roadside” section of the standard 1892 edition of Leaves of Grass, published in New York and now widely available from imprints such as W. W. Norton (1973), is a prime example of a Drum-Taps poem whose subject is not confined to the Civil War. Although one of its important themes deals with the idea of unity and individualism that resonates with the struggle for the Union of States, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” is chiefly a poem about romanticism, nature, and astronomy. With its sophisticated linguistic devices and its organization that envisions an escape from a confined lecture room to the glory of the night sky, the poem contrasts the limited scientific process with a personal and romantic interaction with the stars. A visionary poem with an intimate and immediate voice, it is a brilliant example of Whitman’s achievement, containing a broad and transcendental vision into a short romantic poem.

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer Summary

Lines 1–2

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” begins by repeating the title, something that often occurs in Whitman’s poetry and gives extra weight to the first phrase, to set up the idea that the speaker is listening to an educated scientist. This phrase also stands out because of its internal rhyme, or rhyme within the same line, of “heard” with “learn’d.” This is also a slant rhyme, or an inexact rhyme, since “learn’d” has an “n” sound unlike “heard,” but it nevertheless emphasizes a sense of repetition. The slant rhyme even gives the first line an impression of awkwardness, since it is difficult to pronounce and uses the same long vowel sound twice in a row.

The other element of the first line to notice is use of the contracted version of “learned.” Whitman frequently contracts words such as this, which would always be spelled out today, partly in an attempt to capture the way people actually spoke, instead of a high prose style. In this context, the contraction places some distance between the speaker of the poem, or the voice of the narrator, and the educated astronomer to whom he is listening. The poet may be suggesting here that the speaker uses a different, perhaps a more common or lower class, style of expression from the learned scientist.

Line 2 of the poem then presents the interesting image of “proofs” and “figures” of mathematical equations “ranged,” or arranged, in “columns.” Notice that the poem’s first four lines become increasingly longer, unlike these columns, which presumably go straight up and down within the same horizontal space. If a poetic line stretches beyond the margin, the standard method of printing that line is to continue it below, after an indentation. If a poetic line is continued in this way, therefore, it does not change the fact that the line should be considered to extend further and further to the right. Thus Whitman is likely to be contrasting the visual poetic expansion in the lines with the columned mathematical expansion of the astronomer’s proofs.

Lines 3–4

The third line, in which the speaker is shown materials related to astronomy and asked to manipulate mathematical equations, is full of mathematical diction, or word choice, such as “charts,” “diagrams,”... » Complete When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer Summary