When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer By Walt Whitman Analysis

At the beginning of the poem the speaker shares what is going on in the lecture room about astronomy, and how he is just learning about charts and data, basically math; however, he tells about how he leaves the classroom to actually see what he learning about which he was not seeing in the lecture room. One theme I believe to be revealed in this poem is that knowledge is experience, as with just the mathematics side of things you can never fully learn something, just theoretically. At first I thought the speaker was going to be speaking about an epiphany that he had when listening to the learn'd astronomer; however, as it turns out he is criticizing education as making the point he is just hearing not learning. 

Another theme that I have noticed that this poem could be getting at is the fact that people often over complicate nature. At first humans saw stars, then started to question them, and them developed this elaborate science behind it with charts and diagrams enough to make someone dizzy with something once a simple thing. As I read the first quatrain, I could immediately tell there was a shift in the poem as the sentence length diminished and it became sensory in the second quatrain making the mood seem peaceful. The last sentence, "Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars," can indicated the simplicity to stars by using the word 'silence', which completely contrasts with elaborate science behind astronomy in the first quatrain; in addiction, the speaker uses perfect to describe the silence arguing that simplicity is perfection. By the speaker getting sick and having to leave the astronomy class, I believe another argument,  or theme, this poem is that people over complicate nature.