Sustainability Management (C-Mac External Drivers)

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101

Walt Whitman’s poem When I heard the learn’d Astronomer”

Write a paper in which you give an interpretation of Whitman’s poem "The learn’d Astronomer" based on lexical patterns in the poem. In your introduction you should frame a thesis that offers an interpretation of the poem based primarily on lexical data and lexical patterns. In the body of your paper you should make an argument to support your thesis. The body should include an analysis of the SEMANTIC overlaps that appear in each lexical category to give such an analysis you need to break each section of the poem (there are two such sections) into lexical categories (Noun, Verb, Adjective, etc. ) and identify the semantic connections between/among the words in the categories. The semantic categories, together with their interpretative slant,should form the basis of your reading of 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 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.