Which quotation from Leaves of Grass most effectively illustrates the… | Verbal SAT Question

Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by Walt Whitman, first published in 1855 and expanded in several later editions. In one of the collection’s poems, the speaker suggests that a direct, solitary encounter with the natural world can offer something that formal scientific instruction does not.

Which quotation from Leaves of Grass most effectively illustrates the claim?

“When I heard the learn’d astronomer, / When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, / When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,” (from “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”)

“How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / 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.” (from “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”)

“A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; / How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.” (from “Song of Myself”)

“I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, / Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,” (from “I Hear America Singing”)