Poetry and Astronomy

Walt Whitman's poem "When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer" reads:

"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"

First published in his book Blades of Grass in 1885, Whitman's poem reminds the astronomy community to remember what they are studying.  In the poem Whitman's narrator recalls sitting in a lecture, and looking upon a presentation of math, formulas, and diagrams. The lecture hall applauds the astronomer's work, but the narrator becomes ill.  He quickly realizes that this is not the type of astronomy that he wanted to study.  Seeking haven, he leaves the lecture hall and runs out into the night to stare slightly at the stars.  

In this work, Whitman seeks not to criticize the glorious mathematics of astronomy, rather, he calls astronomers to remember the reality behind the equations.  It is easy to lose the beauty of the universe in the mathematics, but thankfully, we have labs to get us out of classroom, and back to our true subject matter: the stars.

Poem source: http://www.bartleby.com/142/180.html