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Stars, I Heard The Learn D Astronomer

Decent Essays

Art comes in many different forms, and there are similarities and differences in all forms of art. While “Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall” by A.E. Housman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman, and Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh have some obvious similarities, they have striking differences as well. While the poems and painting may seem like innocent pieces of work, they all share a similar theme and tone. “Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall” just sounds like a more pessimistic poem just by the title, but when if someone were to actually read the poem, they would come across “But no star is lost at all / From all the star-sown sky” (Housman 3-4). These lines are expressing that even though a star may fall and die, it does not make …show more content…

The narrator in “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” talks about feeling sick and tired when the lecture was over, and the poem itself almost has a confusing or blurry ending (5-8), while Starry Night is a piece …show more content…

First, the two poems have the most obvious difference between all three, as Whitman’s poem has an unclear and optimistic ending by saying “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” (6-8), while Housman’s poem is pessimistic the entire poem. “Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall” ends by saying “It rains into the sea, / And still the sea is salt” (7-8), which is more the author seemingly accepting the fact that human life is meaningless, so Housman’s poem does not have a resolution. Both poems can speak to different people depending on their views on life and how they are emotionally at that point in time. Starry Night contrasts more to Housman’s poem, because while it is uncertain as to what Van Gogh’s piece real meaning is, the meaning can be inferred, and with the possibility of yellow representing hope, then it is different from Housman’s which is more acceptance that life has no meaning. As Van Gogh was mentally unstable for the majority of his life, he was put in a mental health asylum, where he made Starry Night, and the artwork itself was the view he saw from his window. Van Gogh felt isolation for the majority of his life as most people did not appreciate his art when he was alive, so Starry Night’s dark colors can express how he felt, and the yellow could

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