Stars

Had to think of this poem last night when i gazed up watching the stars..


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 the 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.

and this it comes from a letter from Stendhal to his sister:
"Wat baat het mij om te weten dat de zon om de aarde draait, of de aarde om de zon, indien ik door de kennis van deze dingen de dagen verlies die mij zijn gegeven om ervan te genieten?"

eh in a bad translation from me:

"What's the benefit for me to know that the sun spins round the earth, or the earth round the sun, when through that knowledge i am loosing the days which where given me to enjoy
them.."

and he finished with "Many people, my sweet Pauline, are foolish enough for that; but we will not be."