Walt Whitman and the Meteor of 1860

Year of meteors! brooding year!

I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds and signs,

I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad,

I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia

So begins one of Walt Whitman's poems. More about Whitman and his interest in celestial bodies on the new Library of America blog, Reader's Almanac.