Parsing “The Learn’d Astronomer”by Walt Whitman
Being the first time that I’ve parsed a piece of literature to find correlations in meaning,
picking apart “The Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman led to some surprising discoveries.
Many word and phrase placements seemed highly intentional, while others felt randomly placed
in context of the piece. As an overarching theme to the poem, we see that it’s split into two parts:
the first half containing the relative pronoun “When” as the first word of each line, and the
second half containing predicates that follow verbs in every case, a feature that the top half lacks.
With this in mind, the drastic split directly in the middle of the poem brings tension from the
beginning to the end, along with the differentiation between transitive and intransitive verbs, and
the segments that contain prepositions after these verbs.
As mentioned prior, the first four lines contain the relative pronoun “When” at the
beginning of each line, a tactic that pulls the reader further into the story as we reach the halfway marker. By using these pronouns, we can see Whitman is connecting his sentences by
comparing the narrator listening and seeing the astronomer lecture, to acts the narrator
undertakes that we are not fully aware of quite yet. At this point, the entirety of the story is
leading us to some event that hasn’t been established.
In regards to the verb usage, we can see that majority of the verb forms in the first half
were transitive. Besides the act of Whitman having “heard” the astronomer and being “shown”
the charts and diagrams of his work, there doesn’t seem to be much movement via verb usage.
The reader understands that Whitman is sitting, listening, and viewing in the first half, but the
elements behind these actions feel stagnant, almost as if the reader is supposed to be sitting in
Whitman’s position with him.
Unlike the first, the second half contains much faster moving action and vivid feelings
with the use of personally adhered attributive adjectives and intransitive verbs, all while giving
more detail of the setting with prepositions following those verbs. As we finally get to see what
the relative pronouns were connecting us to from the first half, we get an insight into the feelings
of the narrator, moving from negative feelings of confinement in the lecture-hall, to the open,
airy feeling of singular freedom from the stars themselves. Seeing intransitive verbs such as
“rising” and “gliding” into the preposition “out”, right into another intransitive verb “wander’d,”
we can vividly see the narrator moving away from things that were holding him back, almost as
if a black and white image faded into color. Remaining so still in the beginning, with a sensory
overload from the astronomer lecturing with his charts and diagrams, the narrator unconsciously
felt sick. Because of this, he moves out into the night alone, gaining the spacious freedom and
the idea that he could possibly be self-taught, as well as escaping a claustrophobic room, both
mentally and physically.
Whitman’s ability to split his poem in half creates tension for the reader, pulling them in
and creating wonder of what’s coming next. With the use of relative pronouns in the beginning
and impersonal transitive verbs, the reader gets the feeling of stagnation as they await the
answers that hide behind the second half. In the second half, the reader is relieved by way of
movement using intransitive verbs, and prepositions that shed a light on the setting in more
depth, thus leading to an open, airy feeling of freedom.
Copyright © Austin Cosler. All Rights Reserved. Works Cited
Whitman, Walt, and Kathleen Rooney. "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer." Poetry
Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 29 Sept. 2014.
Here is a parsing of the first half:
Copyright © Austin Cosler. All Rights Reserved.