Behold this swarthy face!

I just love Walt Whitman. He's a trip. Yes, sometimes he can go on too long, and sometimes he rambles about really strange stuff, and sometimes his poetry is pretty crappy...I mean, questionable. But then he busts out with stuff like the first canto of "Song of Myself," or this great little 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, the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the learned 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.

Here's the age-old dilemma: is science, in its quest for answers and rationalizations, robbing nature of its mystery and beauty? Whitman seems to think so. Or is there something also beautiful in "the proofs, the figures"?

(I didn't say I agreed with the poem. I said I liked it.)