The Learn’d Astronomer

The below poem by Walt Whitman kind of makes me chuckle a bit. Much of science can seem to be dry if presented solely in the form of numbers and charts and diagrams. To a poet, it may seem kind of dry and without romance. But, really, it is all romantic. All of it. Enjoying the beauty is quite simple; the numbers are the hard parts. It takes a driving passion and curiosity to want to dig, do the work, and figure out the details behind the natural beauty of the universe.

When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer
by Walt Whitman.

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 the 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.