The Milky Way

I feel sure that the decline of spirituality in the modern world, not even religious belief but a connection to something other than sheer materialism - and the complete absence of care in society for our world - is due entirely to the awfulness of light pollution.

No one can fail to be moved by the stars.

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mainvane · 61-69, M

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer
BY 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.