When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer

The speaker carefully lists the many materials the astronomer uses throughout the course of his lecture: “the proofs, the figures” that are arranged “in columns” (Line 2), and the “charts and diagrams” (Line 3) that display the astronomer’s calculations, allowing him “to add, divide, and measure [the stars]” (Line 3). The astronomer’s materials and the scientific data they contain are all symbols of academic knowledge and of the astronomer’s rational, evidence-based approach to nature. The fact that the astronomer’s materials are all used in deciphering the sky’s mysteries and bringing order to the natural world symbolizes that science is a regulatory sort of force: it can quantify, measure, and make tidier even the immensities of the sky. By contrast, the speaker describes his “tired and sick” emotional reaction to the lecture as “unaccountable” (Line 5) – a highly significant choice of word, as it contains a double meaning. On one hand, the speaker’s reaction is “unaccountable” because it does not make sense – he does not know why he should feel this way after hearing an astronomy lecture. On the other hand, it is “unaccountable” in the sense that it cannot be logically measured or quantified – it is something that eludes the precise kind of data the astronomer favors.