Star-Glazing
(after Walt Whitman)
When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer,
When the proofs and figures were ranged
In columns before me, to add and measure,
When shown his charts and diagrams strange,
When I, sitting, heard the Astronomer,
Where he lectured with much applause,
How soon, tired and sick, I stirred
And wander’d off by myself outdoors.
There in mystical moist night-airs,
From time to time I look’d up clear
In perfect silence at the stars,
(And thought them small, and rather near.)
This is my take on Walt Whitman’s poem of the opening line. I’ve shuffled things around and made it rhyme, but most of it is his words except for the last line. Turns out he was just a luddite after all.
