When I heard the Learnd Astronomer :: essays research papers

Upon rare occasion, my freshman pal actually decided to pull his nose out of his lousy video game, and join me upon reading this poem. Actually, I should consecrate that I forced him to do this, because he needed to analyze a poem for his own English class, and the music coming from the television was beyond annoying. Anyway, my brothers reaction to the poem was something along the lines of So this guy is basically saying that science, by measuring and investigating nature, somehow detracts from its beauty.Although my initial motivator was to bop him on the head, I re try oned myself and calmly told him that he is an idiot. Where does Walt necessarily disagree with science? He doesnt. It is an assumption on my idiot brothers part that he is drawing a thick line between mechanical theory and natural beauty. The narrator only expresses his disgust for the "professor" subject, as well as the lecture-room crowd, who is, perhaps, pretentious in his own right. He only dislikes the method with which Astronomy is infixed. The poems stark contrast between the two attitudes just serves to present Walts opinion, which is that the subject CAN be more organic, and less robotic. By having the narrator veer towards one extreme over another, Walt ingeniously shows the possibility of middle ground.I know that I just stated the Whitman and the narrative are the same but the fact that the author and the narrator dont always have the same bode of view doesnt necessarily imply that in this case, they have different points of view. Whitman was a follower of the Romantic tradition by and large, his poems do reflect what he feels and believes. If he had wanted to, Im sure he could have distanced himself from his narrators point of view more explicitly since he didnt, I assume that it wasnt his intention to do so.Returning to the poem, flavor the wonderful quality of the verse itself. There is a common misconception that free verse implies a total disregard of form this is, of course, far from the truth. Read aloud, I calculate the way in which Whitman has echoed his reaction to the lecture in the long, somewhat droning lines that make no attempt to mirror the natural rhythms of speech, and the instant easing of strain when he leaves, allowing poetry to reassert itself.