Obviously, we generally don’t have a Poet’s Corner in the Sidereal Times. However, when I came across a fellow New Jerseyan’s 19th century poem, it gave me pause, and we should not take offense. The purity of thought, as to why we’re all members is more important than his seeming boredom with the technicalities of it all.
David Kaplan
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in col-umns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lec-tured 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.
by Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892)
