THE ASTRONOMER (WALT WHITMAN) AND LEGITIMACY PREDILECTIONS OF POETS

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.

To start the new year without being tired let´s do the comment to Aldous Huxley, who in Science and Literature wrote abput this poem:

For some people the contempaltion of scientific theories is an experience hardly less golden than the experience of being in love or looking at a sunset. Whitman wasn´t one of them. As a human being who enjoys and suffers, facts and Astronomic hypothesis kept him cool; he preferred silence and stars. In the case of a poet, this is a compeltely legitimacy predilection