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.
+++
This month is proving too crazy to post a poem a day for National Poetry Month again, but I am going to try to share some old favorites, and I hope you are all out there reading and writing and reciting and remembering it every day of the year.
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.
+++
This month is proving too crazy to post a poem a day for National Poetry Month again, but I am going to try to share some old favorites, and I hope you are all out there reading and writing and reciting and remembering it every day of the year.