With Apologies to Walt Whitman

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.

Walt Whitman

     More than once, I’ve heard real-life “learn’d astronomers” tell me how they absolutely hated this poem, and then proceed to explain just how much poetry, beauty, and yes – mystery, were contained within those “charts and diagrams” that Walt Whitman found so soul destroying. And I normally I would have to agree.

     Nowadays, however, I find myself with a quite different reaction. I actually envy Whitman’s ability to walk out of a crowded lecture room (doubtless in the middle of a fair-sized 19th Century city), and look up “in perfect silence at the stars”. Were I to try the same today after hearing a guest speaker at one of our HAL meetings, I would be met with a battleship gray sky pierced by a half dozen pitiful excuses for stars, accompanied not by “perfect silence”, but by a cacophony of noise from nearby highways.

     Attempting to catch a glimpse of the perhaps inappropriately-named EZ Aquarii through the particularly ugly southwestern light dome that washes out fully one fourth of the sky from even Howard County’s darkest sky sites brings to focus just how much we have lost as a civilization by thoughtlessly and purposelessly trashing the night sky, robbing us as a people of fully one half of the beauty around us – that half which happens to be located over our heads.

Perhaps Whitman’s poem needs to be re-written for the 21st Century:

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,

When the robotic probe data were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the HST images, to ponder the color pallet employed,

And wonder’d how the displayed object might actually look to a human eye, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon I, desiring to see for myself,

In an instant became tired and sick,

When rising and gliding out, and wandering off by myself

Into the degraded and despoiled night-air, from time to time,

Look'd up amidst an incessant background of racing automobile engines, At that which once had been the mystical stars.