This is, in large part a concession to my wife who wanted this poem as part of this circle, though Whitman certainly deserves a spot due to Roadmarks.
Up today, Doorways in the Sand!
I had to bump a different Whitman piecem Song of Myself (paired with Bridge of Ashes ("I am large, I contain multitudes") to make room.
However, I think this deserves a spot. Fred's entire personality is a rejection of learned expertise in favor of lived, intuitive experience, just like the speaker in the poem.
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
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.
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