Question

What influence did transcendentalism have on Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"?

Answer 1

Whitman gets up and walks out of the lecture hall because he is tired of all the words, numbers, and technicalities about stars and he just goes outside and looks at the stars in the night sky and that is all he needs psychically. It ties in with Emerson's transcendental idea that man is (or should be) just a big eye ball who observes and experiences but try to dominate or interfere.