Propel subjects to action, incite inanimate objects to movement; verbs meet and exceed these functions. Without verbs, a sentence would not be such, a proposition would fall in rank down to a sentence or a simple sentence. There are three generalized categories of verbs belonging to Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer": action verbs, linking verbs, and helping verbs. Action verbs set the subject of the clause or sentence in motion, linking verbs establish a state of being and help the verbs add to both action and linking verbs to increase the detail of these verbs. A movement within the poem separates the text and the corresponding verbs into two halves; the change falls at the start of the fifth line after four successive clauses, where "when" begins each. The first half includes simple action verbs and some helping verbs in addition to a few verbs, the second half contains only linking and action verbs, no helping verbs. Through the contrasting structure and content between the two halves, the verbs reveal that with science and mathematics, humans are able to create a relationship with nature in order to understand some aspects of the mysteries behind it and to not to remain ignorant of the known functioning of the world. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay This division of the poem creates two distinct parts where the main verb implies one of the five senses and the subtleties of the text induce another. The first half explicitly states that the speaker “heard the learned astronomer” (1); the rest of the half revolves around the events of the astronomer's conference. During the lecture, the speaker “was shown graphs and diagrams” (3) as well as other mathematical and scientific tools. The images of “evidence, figures” (2) are ambiguous, vague. These tools are a visual representation of mathematical ideas, but the speaker does not provide direct descriptions of the concepts denoted by the diagrams. The second half, in a similar but opposite construction, focuses on seeing certain visuals and the emergence of sound. There is a direct statement that the speaker "looked...at the stars" (8); although there are no specific details that they provide to the imagery, the concept of a star has a concrete vision. In the words of the second half, figurative elements illuminate the sound. Assonance accompanies the speaker's movements as he "rises and glides" (6), the initial alliteration describes "the mystical, damp air of the night" (7). These sound devices add the effect of sound, but not actual sound. emits from the external environment. In “perfect silence” (8), this speaker looks at the stars; throughout the speaker's wanderings, no physical sound emerges from him. The second half makes it clear that there is an absence of sound; the first half makes no mention of the speaker's contribution to the conference audio. Here another conclusion emerges; for the speaker to hear the words of the lecture, he must remain silent. Clues to the speaker's supposed silence appear in the poem's verbs. Other verbs like “were put away” (2) and “was shown” (3) are passive constructions of verbs; these actions are not performed by the speaker, they are performed by the astronomer. The astronomer arranges “the evidence, the figures” (2), he displays “the maps and diagrams” (3). As for the other verbs, the speaker “heard the astronomer” (1), the speaker.