When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer: Summary & Analysis

Melchior Antoine
May 10
5 min read

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” is a poem by Walt Whitman, where the poet is confronted by and reacts to scientific attitudes regarding the study of the stars.

Before advancements in astronomy and the telescope, which allowed scientists to determine the geography of the stars or planets in relation to the Earth, the stars were treated as mystical and romantic.

With the new scientific knowledge and understanding that emerged in Walt Whitman’s time in the nineteenth century, poets and other writing creatives were now challenged with their romantic concepts of what stars meant. The poem by Walt Whitman represents the kind of hostile and slightly disturbed attitude toward accurately measuring the stars.

The full text of the poem

Here is the full text of the poem. It is rather short and is made up of a single stanza and eight lines:

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.

Whitman’s poem "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" was first published in 1865 in his poetry collection Drum-Taps. It was later included in Leaves of Grass in 1867.

Image of Walt Whitman, author of "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

Summary & rhetorical analysis of "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer"

The poem’s setting is somewhat obvious. The poet or persona of the poem is attending a lecture being told by a scientific astronomer. The astronomer seems to be giving a lecture on the latest discoveries in his field.

Whitman feels bored and uncomfortable by the speech. Then he decides suddenly to leave the room to enjoy “the mystical moist night-air” and to look up at the stars in silence.

The poem is written in free verse and lacks many of the traditional rhetorical devices we associated with traditional poetry, such as regular rhyme and elaborate metaphors. Nonetheless, the poem is subtle in the way that it is written.

It relies heavily on repetition, in particular, anaphora, that is repetition at the beginning. It also depends on suggestiveness and a kind of understatement.

Let’s begin with how anaphora is used in the poem. “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” can be divided into two segments, almost like a traditional sonnet. But instead of having an octave (the first eight lines) and a seated (the last six lines), we have the poem equally divided into four lines.

The first four lines are defined by anaphora, with the terms “when” and "when I” being used repeatedly. It describes the poet listening to the astronomer in the lecture room. The repetition here has a specific purpose.

It recreates the boredom of listening to a long lecture. The room may have felt crowded and stuffy and must have been making the poet increasingly uncomfortable and frustrated.

This is even reflected in the way the lines run. For example, the lines of the poem keep getting longer and longer from Line 1 until it culminates in the longest line of the poem in Line 4.

The last four lines break away from the anaphora structure and describe the poet leaving the room. The way the poet describes leaving the room suggests the freedom and release from the discomfort that Whitman may have felt.

Words like “rising” and “gliding” in Line 6 give the impression of a balloon that has been tied down finally being untied to float in the wind. Anastrophe is another literary device used in Line 5, where the word “unaccountable” is used in the middle of the line, when ordinarily it would go at the end.

The effect of using anastrophe here is to help in introducing the second segment or movement of the poem. By introducing anastrophe here, the poet is preparing us for the break from the anaphora pattern previously established and the tedium of the lecture room, which he is about to escape.

The poet also makes use of alliteration to emphasize the “atmosphere” of night-air compared to the stuffy lecture room. The “night-air” is described as “mystical moist,” with the “m” sound being repeated. In addition, he uses a type of alliteration known as sibilance, with beginning “s” sounds being repeated in the phrase “silence at the stars.”

The effect of such alliteration is to show that looking up at the stars without questioning or measuring them is more natural and calming than trying to reduce the heavens down to mathematical equations.

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Themes and comparative analysis

The main theme of “When I heard the Learn’d astronomer” is the clash between a romantic conceptualization of the physical heavens or stars versus a scientific conceptualization.

To understand what I mean, it would be good to look at old or classical concepts of stars in poetry and make a comparative analysis. Traditionally, in poetry and literature, stars are used to symbolize romance and love.

A good example of this would be Sir Philip Sydney’s “Astrophil and Stella 31: With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies” (published in 1591). The poem is written in the form of a sonnet. Here, it is in full:

With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!

How silently, and with how wan a face!

What, may it be that even in heav'nly place

That busy archer his sharp arrows tries!

Sure, if that long-with love-acquainted eyes

Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case,

I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace

To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.

Then, ev'n of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,

Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit?

Are beauties there as proud as here they be?

Do they above love to be lov'd, and yet

Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?

Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

In this sonnet, Sydney is comparing his heartbreak with the situation of the moon. He is imagining that the moon must know the heartbreak that he suffers, considering how slowly the moon rises across the sky.

The moon’s trajectory is described as “sad steps” and its surface is described as “how wan a face.” There is even an allusion to the God of love, Cupid, with the phrase “That busy archer.”

The poem is a traditional Shakespearean sonnet divided into an octave and a sestet. The first eight lines draw an analogy between the moon and a heartbroken male lover. The last six lines reveals that the poet too is heartbroken and asking of the moon if women are as ungrateful and treacherous in dealing with men's hearts in heaven as they are on earth.

In short, Sydney is projecting human emotion, affairs, and even pettiness onto the heavens and planets. This is in stark contrast to Walt Whitman’s astronomer, who seeks to define the moon and other planets in terms of “charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure.”

Whitman is more in league with Sidney’s conceptualization of the moon or planets as something mysterious and undefined. The mystery of the stars means that we are free to use our imagination to project our own dreams and feelings unto them in an attempt to come to terms with our own knowledge of self.

In the case of Walt Whitman, being a poet meant that he would feel somewhat threatened or offended by the idea of the stars being reduced to mathematical formulas or as he puts it “proofs” and “figures.”