This poem (the Whitman one) has always bothered me. It's Yet Another echo of the tired refrain about how science takes all the wonder and mystery out of the world.
Takes it out?!
Those stars! Each one is an enormous ball of gas, changing elements one into another, glowing with the pure energy of transmutation. Unimaginably huge: bigger than a million Earths, yet so distant that to us they appear as points. Literally points, of no physical dimension. The light we see from some started traveling toward us when our grandfather's grandfathers were alive.
All of which is a puny, utterly insignificant corner of a universe that extends unimaginably beyond what we can see.
Mystery and wonder! I got yer mystery and wonder right here, pal.