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A Whitman erasure by Esther Greenleaf Murer
 

...Walt Whitman, "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 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.