| Walt Whitman (1819-1892. He is the American poet…) | |||||||||||||||||
| WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D ASTRONOMER (I feel the same way!) | A PORTION OF LEAVES OF GRASS [21] | ||||||||||||||||
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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. |
I am the poet of the body, And I am the poet of the soul. The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me, The first graft and increase upon myself….the latter I translate into a new tongue. …. I am he that walks with the tender and growing night; I call to the earth and sea half-held by the night. Press close barebosomed night! Press close magnetic nourishing night! Night of south winds! Night of the large few stars! Still nodding night! Mad naked summer night! Smile O voluptuous coolbreathed earth! Earth of slumbering liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset! Earth of the mountains misty-topt! Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of the shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake! Far-swooping elbowed earth! Rich apple-blossomed earth! Smile for your lover comes! | ||||||||||||||||
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