Poem Analysis: 'When I Heard The Learn' D Astronomer

2428 Words5 Pages

Poetry Analysis – Daphne Yang (i.e. all the allotted poems from The Pocket Book of Modern Verse) When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer – Walt Whitman The poemWhen I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer has some repetition. In lines 1-4, all the sentences begin with ‘when’ and describe the event of the main character listening to an astronomy lecture. I like the repetition because it successfully provided a hypnotic, soothing rhythm. I also like the phrasing. I like that the poem is one long sentence that starts with “When I heard the learn’d astronomer” and ends with “look’d up in perfect silence at the stars” to describe cause and effect. I like that the poem linearly connects the cause and effect presented in the poem – the cause being listening to the astronomy lecture and the effect being getting sick of the lecture and walking out and enjoying the stars. The title, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”, helped me understand the poem. It states the inciting event of the poem – listening to the astronomy lecture. In the poem, the main character dislikes listening to the lecture, but does enjoy going out and observing the stars himself. The message of the poem is how learning for the sake of academia may not be as enjoyable as learning for the sake of learning. -- Jabberwocky – …show more content…

The rhyme structure is AABA (ex. know/though/here/snow) in the first two stanzas and AAAA in the last stanza (deep/keep/sleep/sleep). Not only does the rhyme structure contribute to the ease of reading, it contributes to the easygoingatmosphere of the poem. The narrator knows he has responsibilities to be somewhere; however, he’s moving at a steady even pace that isn’t rushed with as few jars in the rhythm as possible. I like that the rhyme structure contributes to this unrushed tone that makes reading the poem very relaxing. (The 8-syllable-per-line iambic rhythm is also really nice and contributes to

Open Document