This small excerpt from Leaves of Grass serves as a perfect example of Whitman’s point of view about living in the world, about observing the world we’re in rather than intellectually dissecting it or scientifically taxonomizing it, categorizing it, charting it, treating it as a puzzle “solvable” only by so-called “learned men.” The detail “in perfect silence” contrasts with the learn’d astronomer’s droning lecture. Anyone who has ever sat through that sort of erudite, pompous non-teaching environment knows the desire to remove oneself and seek the real, immediate experience of living. “I looked up in perfect silence at the stars” is a brilliant example of how we should live every day.
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