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 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.
As soon as Whitman leaves the suffocating lecture hall and gets away from the people to whom he cannot relate, he begins to feel better and freer. We begin to see a contrast in language from the first half of the poem. The words “rising,” “gliding,” and “wander’d” evoke more open and unrestrained emotions. Whitman’s well-known  non-conformist   ideologies emerge clearly here as well. 

When I Heard the Learnd Astronomer