When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronome

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 thelecture—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.

—1865