When I Heard the Learn
Throughout our lifetime we are constantly in a state of acquiring knowledge. In childhood weare taught the basics to survival in our modern day society, our teachers prepare us. Unfortunately, the tools we use in our journey cannot be obtained through someone else's teachings. As we progress through life we are faced with many trials and tribulations, but through these we come to comprehend the important values and necessities we need to succeed in our world. Walt Whitman's poem "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer" demonstrates this fact of life through many different means. He is suggesting that personal experience through heart gives us a better understanding of life's contents. He shows us this through mind and teachings with explanations, through heart and personal experience, and Many of us have different methods of learning, maybe we excel through visual means, some through verbal means, but just because we hear something doesn't necessarily mean we have learned from it, nor does it mean we have understood what has been said. Many of us find ourselves staring into space daydreaming, allowing the words that are supposed to educate us to pass
The poet explains that somehow, looking up in the sky's, through his own heat-felt experience, had somehow understood more than many years of study could not even have brought. As humans we are all created each in our own unique way. The secondary meaning cannot be easily discovered. As the poet describes how he has lost his interest "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick" the word unaccountable dwarfs the other descriptive detail as to how he lost interest, and unaccountable being something that cannot be explained. We may sometimes in a sense "overdose" on educating ourselves. And so we can see that although we can learn from explanations and other's teachings' we should not be limited to it. We perceive these types of problems as something like a mental block. The poet describes the tools he is being taught ". "When I heard the learn'd astronomer" is basicly divided between heart and mind. A perfect example of this can be seen in the title of the poem as well as in the first line "When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer" we can see that the word "heard" is used to describe that he does in fact hear the words of the astronomer but in this statement another meaning emerges. "Heard" is repeated in the statement "When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room" you can see that to hear and to understand do not coincide. A negative example of someone perceiving a problem is when the poet describes "the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me" The columns represent a personal barrier, similar to the bars of a jail cell, a prisoner of his own mind. Through our times of solitude, we should always learn something. You can also see that the other students have in fact understood by giving the professor much applause of acknowledgment.
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Acceptance Essays
