When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

Walt Whitman's poem "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" describes the feelings of knowing too much about the workings of nature. The speaker in the poem is a student who has attended a lecture on astronomy. As he learns more and more, he becomes more and more depressed until he leaves the lecture room. Whitman uses interesting elements of form, sound, and imagery, but not figurative language, to give meaning to this short poem The poem consists of only one stanza, made of eight lines of varying lengths. The length of the lines does have a pattern, though. The lines get increasingly longer until line four, which is so long it does not fit. As the speaker hears more and more information from the lecturer, the lines become longer and longer, as the lecture becomes more boring and intolerable to the speaker. Each line builds to create an unbearable sadness in the speaker, until he becomes "tired and sick" (line 5). The shorter lines in the last four lines of the poem show the speaker becoming calm again.

Whitman's poem is an example of free verse. Free verse does not have a regular meter or rhyme scheme, and to the ear sounds like natural speech. There are many other sound devices, however. The first line shows assonance in the words "heard" and "learned," as does the sixth line with "rising," "gliding," and "I." Line seven shows alliteration with the use of "mystical" and "moist." The most important sound device, though, is Whitman's use of repetition. The first four lines all begin with the word "when," which underscores the feeling of boredom the speaker feels.

The imagery in the beginning of the poem evokes the sight and sound of the lecture room. The sight imagery in the first four lines consists of figures in columns and charts and diagrams. The sound imagery comes from the applause of the other students who seem to appreciate the scientific information. After leaving the lecture hall, the speaker talks of the "mystical moist