National Poetry Month continues! Today's poem is one I've always related to, and I wonder how many others feel the emotion it describes (and how often). Living in Redding makes it wonderfully easy to stare up at the stars when the need hits me, and I can't imagine living in a place where I can't just escape to truly silent nature.
"When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
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.