Author: Alfred Noyes

---

    PROLOGUE

    The Observatory


    At noon, upon the mountain's purple height,
    Above the pine-woods and the clouds it shone
    No larger than the small white dome of shell
    Left by the fledgling wren when wings are born.
    By night it joined the company of heaven,
    And, with its constant light, became a star.
    A needle-point of light, minute, remote,
    It sent a subtler message through the abyss,
    Held more significance for the seeing eye
    Than all the darkness that would blot it out,
    Yet could not dwarf it.
                            High in heaven it shone,
    Alive with all the thoughts, and hopes, and dreams
    Of man's adventurous mind.
                                 Up there, I knew
    The explorers of the sky, the pioneers
    Of science, now made ready to attack
    That darkness once again, and win new worlds.
    To-morrow night they hoped to crown the toil
    Of twenty years, and turn upon the sky
    The noblest weapon ever made by man.
    War had delayed them. They had been drawn away
    Designing darker weapons. But no gun
    Could outrange this.

    "To-morrow night"--so wrote their chief--"we try
    Our great new telescope, the hundred-inch.
    Your Milton's 'optic tube' has grown in power
    Since Galileo, famous, blind, and old,
    Talked with him, in that prison, of the sky.
    We creep to power by inches. Europe trusts
    Her 'giant forty' still. Even to-night
    Our own old sixty has its work to do;
    And now our hundred-inch . . . I hardly dare
    To think what this new muzzle of ours may find.
    Come up, and spend that night among the stars
    Here, on our mountain-top. If all goes well,
    Then, at the least, my friend, you'll see a moon
    Stranger, but nearer, many a thousand mile
    Than earth has ever seen her, even in dreams.
    As for the stars, if seeing them were all,
    Three thousand million new-found points of light
    Is our rough guess. But never speak of this.
    You know our press. They'd miss the one result
    To flash 'three thousand millions' round the world."
    To-morrow night! For more than twenty years,
    They had thought and planned and worked. Ten years had gone,
    One-fourth, or more, of man's brief working life,
    Before they made those solid tons of glass,
    Their hundred-inch reflector, the clear pool,
    The polished flawless pool that it must be
    To hold the perfect image of a star.
    And, even now, some secret flaw--none knew
    Until to-morrow's test--might waste it all.
    Where was the gambler that would stake so much,--
    Time, patience, treasure, on a single throw?
    The cost of it,--they'd not find that again,
    Either in gold or life-stuff! All their youth
    Was fuel to the flame of this one work.
    Once in a lifetime to the man of science,
    Despite what fools believe his ice-cooled blood,
    There comes this drama.
                            If he fails, he fails
    Utterly. He at least will have no time
    For fresh beginnings. Other men, no doubt,
    Years hence, will use the footholes that he cut
    In those precipitous cliffs, and reach the height,
    But he will never see it."
            So for me,
    The light words of that letter seemed to hide
    The passion of a lifetime, and I shared
    The crowning moment of its hope and fear.
    Next day, through whispering aisles of palm we rode
    Up to the foot-hills, dreaming desert-hills
    That to assuage their own delicious drought
    Had set each tawny sun-kissed slope ablaze
    With peach and orange orchards.
                    Up and up,
    Along the thin white trail that wound and climbed
    And zig-zagged through the grey-green mountain sage,
    The car went crawling, till the shining plain
    Below it, like an airman's map, unrolled.
    Houses and orchards dwindled to white specks
    In midget cubes and squares of tufted green.
    Once, as we rounded one steep curve, that made
    The head swim at the canyoned gulf below,
    We saw through thirty miles of lucid air
    Elvishly small, sharp as a crumpled petal
    Blown from the stem, a yard away, a sail
    Lazily drifting on the warm blue sea.
    Up for nine miles along that spiral trail
    Slowly we wound to reach the lucid height
    Above the clouds, where that white dome of shell,
    No wren's now, but an eagle's, took the flush
    Of dying day. The sage-brush all died out,
    And all the southern growths, and round us now,
    Firs of the north, and strong, storm-rooted pines
    Exhaled a keener fragrance; till, at last,
    Reversing all the laws of lesser hills,
    They towered like giants round us. Darkness fell
    Before we reached the mountain's naked height.

    Over us, like some great cathedral dome,
    The observatory loomed against the sky;
    And the dark mountain with its headlong gulfs
    Had lost all memory of the world below;
    For all those cloudless throngs of glittering stars
    And all those glimmerings where the abyss of space
    Is powdered with a milky dust, each grain
    A burning sun, and every sun the lord
    Of its own darkling planets,--all those lights
    Met, in a darker deep, the lights of earth,
    Lights on the sea, lights of invisible towns,
    Trembling and indistinguishable from stars,
    In those black gulfs around the mountain's feet.
    Then, into the glimmering dome, with bated breath,
    We entered, and, above us, in the gloom
    Saw that majestic weapon of the light
    Uptowering like the shaft of some huge gun
    Through one arched rift of sky.
                    Dark at its base
    With naked arms, the crew that all day long
    Had sweated to make ready for this night
    Waited their captain's word.
             The switchboard shone
    With elfin lamps of white and red, and keys
    Whence, at a finger's touch, that monstrous tube
    Moved like a creature dowered with life and will,
    To peer from deep to deep.
                                 Below it pulsed
    The clock-machine that slowly, throb by throb,
    Timed to the pace of the revolving earth,
    Drove the titanic muzzle on and on,
    Fixed to the chosen star that else would glide
    Out of its field of vision.
            So, set free
    Balanced against the wheel of time, it swung,
    Or rested, while, to find new realms of sky
    The dome that housed it, like a moon revolved,
    So smoothly that the watchers hardly knew
    They moved within; till, through the glimmering doors,
    They saw the dark procession of the pines
    Like Indian warriors, quietly stealing by.

    Then, at a word, the mighty weapon dipped
    Its muzzle and aimed at one small point of light
    One seeming insignificant star.
                    The chief,
    Mounting the ladder, while we held our breath,
    Looked through the eye-piece.
                Then we heard him laugh
    His thanks to God, and hide it in a jest.
    "A prominence on Jupiter!"--
             They laughed,
    "What do you mean?"--"It's moving," cried the chief,
    They laughed again, and watched his glimmering face
    High overhead against that moving tower.
    "Come up and see, then!"
                             One by one they went,
    And, though each laughed as he returned to earth,
    Their souls were in their eyes.
                    Then I, too, looked,
    And saw that insignificant spark of light
    Touched with new meaning, beautifully reborn,
    A swimming world, a perfect rounded pearl,
    Poised in the violet sky; and, as I gazed,
    I saw a miracle,--right on its upmost edge
    A tiny mound of white that slowly rose,
    Then, like an exquisite seed-pearl, swung quite clear
    And swam in heaven above its parent world
    To greet its three bright sister-moons.
                                    A moon,
    Of Jupiter, no more, but clearer far
    Than mortal eyes had seen before from earth,
    O, beautiful and clear beyond all dreams
    Was that one silver phrase of the starry tune
    Which Galileo's "old discoverer" first
    Dimly revealed, dissolving into clouds
    The imagined fabric of our universe.
    "Jupiter stands in heaven and will stand
    Though all the sycophants bark at him," he cried,
    Hailing the truth before he, too, went down,
    Whelmed in the cloudy wreckage of that dream.

    So one by one we looked, the men who served
    Urania, and the men from Vulcan's forge.
    A beautiful eagerness in the darkness lit
    The swarthy faces that too long had missed
    A meaning in the dull mechanic maze
    Of labour on this blind earth, but found it now.
    Though only a moment's wandering melody
    Hopelessly far above, it gave their toil
    Its only consecration and its joy.
    There, with dark-smouldering eyes and naked throats,
    Blue-dungareed, red-shirted, grimed and smeared
    With engine-grease and sweat, they gathered round
    The foot of that dim ladder; each muttering low
    As he came down, his wonder at what he saw
    To those who waited,--a picture for the brush
    Of Rembrandt, lighted only by the rift
    Above them, where the giant muzzle thrust
    Out through the dim arched roof, and slowly throbbed,
    Against the slowly moving wheel of the earth,
    Holding their chosen star.
                                 There, like an elf,
    Perched on the side of that dark slanting tower
    The Italian mechanician watched the moons,
    That Italy discovered.
                         One by one,
    American, English, French, and Dutch, they climbed
    To see the wonder that their own blind hands
    Had helped to achieve.
                         At midnight while they paused
    To adjust the clock-machine, I wandered out
    Alone, into the silence of the night.
    The silence? On that lonely height I heard
    Eternal voices;
    For, as I looked into the gulf beneath,
    Whence almost all the lights had vanished now,
    The whole dark mountain seemed to have lost its earth
    And to be sailing like a ship through heaven.
    All round it surged the mighty sea-like sound
    Of soughing pine-woods, one vast ebb and flow
    Of absolute peace, aloof from all earth's pain,
    So calm, so quiet, it seemed the cradle-song,
    The deep soft breathing of the universe
    Over its youngest child, the soul of man.
    And, as I listened, that Aeolian voice
    Became an invocation and a prayer:
    O you, that on your loftier mountain dwell
    And move like light in light among the thoughts
    Of heaven, translating our mortality
    Into immortal song, is there not one
    Among you that can turn to music now
    This long dark fight for truth? Not one to touch
    With beauty this long battle for the light,
    This little victory of the spirit of man
    Doomed to defeat--for what was all we saw
    To that which neither eyes nor soul could see?--
    Doomed to defeat and yet unconquerable,
    Climbing its nine miles nearer to the stars.
    Wars we have sung. The blind, blood-boltered kings
    Move with an epic music to their thrones.
    Have you no song, then, of that nobler war?
    Of those who strove for light, but could not dream
    Even of this victory that they helped to win,
    Silent discoverers, lonely pioneers,
    Prisoners and exiles, martyrs of the truth
    Who handed on the fire, from age to age;
    Of those who, step by step, drove back the night
    And struggled, year on year, for one more glimpse
    Among the stars, of sovran law, their guide;
    Of those who searching inward, saw the rocks
    Dissolving into a new abyss, and saw
    Those planetary systems far within,
    Atoms, electrons, whirling on their way
    To build and to unbuild our solid world;
    Of those who conquered, inch by difficult inch,
    The freedom of this realm of law for man;
    Dreamers of dreams, the builders of our hope,
    The healers and the binders up of wounds,
    Who, while the dynasts drenched the world with blood,
    Would in the still small circle of a lamp
    Wrestle with death like Heracles of old
    To save one stricken child.
            Is there no song
    To touch this moving universe of law
    With ultimate light, the glimmer of that great dawn
    Which over our ruined altars yet shall break
    In purer splendour, and restore mankind
    From darker dreams than even Lucretius knew
    To vision of that one Power which guides the world.
    How should men find it? Only through those doors
    Which, opening inward, in each separate soul
    Give each man access to that Soul of all
    Living within each life, not to be found
    Or known, till, looking inward, each alone
    Meets the unknowable and eternal God.

    And there was one that moved like light in light
    Before me there,--Love, human and divine,
    That can exalt all weakness into power,--
    Whispering, Take this deathless torch of song...
    Whispering, but with such faith, that even I
    Was humbled into thinking this might be
    Through love, though all the wisdom of the world
    Account it folly.
                Let my breast be bared
    To every shaft, then, so that Love be still
    My one celestial guide the while I sing
    Of those who caught the pure Promethean fire
    One from another, each crying as he went down
    To one that waited, crowned with youth and joy,--
    Take thou the splendour, carry it out of sight
    Into the great new age I must not know,
    Into the great new realm I must not tread.




    I

    Copernicus


    The neighbours gossiped idly at the door.
    Copernicus lay dying overhead.
    His little throng of friends, with startled eyes,
    Whispered together, in that dark house of dreams,
    From which by one dim crevice in the wall
    He used to watch the stars.
            "His book has come
    From Nuremberg at last; but who would dare
    To let him see it now?"--
                                "They have altered it!
    Though Rome approved in full, this preface, look,
    Declares that his discoveries are a dream!"--
    "He has asked a thousand times if it has come;
    Could we tear out those pages?"--
                        "He'd suspect."--
    "What shall be done, then?"--
                "Hold it back awhile.
    That was the priest's voice in the room above.
    He may forget it. Those last sacraments
    May set his mind at rest, and bring him peace."--
    Then, stealing quietly to that upper door,
    They opened it a little, and saw within
    The lean white deathbed of Copernicus
    Who made our world a world without an end.
    There, in that narrow room, they saw his face
    Grey, seamed with thought, lit by a single lamp;
    They saw those glorious eyes
    Closing, that once had looked beyond the spheres
    And seen our ancient firmaments dissolve
    Into a boundless night.
                            Beside him knelt
    Two women, like bowed shadows. At his feet,
    An old physician watched him. At his head,
    The cowled Franciscan murmured, while the light
    Shone faintly on the chalice.
                All grew still.
    The fragrance of the wine was like faint flowers,
    The first breath of those far celestial fields....

    Then, like a dying soldier, that must leave
    His last command to others, while the fight
    Is yet uncertain, and the victory far,
    Copernicus whispered, in a fevered dream,
    "Yes, it is Death. But you must hold him back,
    There, in the doorway, for a little while,
    Until I know the work is rightly done.
    Use all your weapons, doctor. I must live
    To see and touch one copy of my book.
    Have they not brought it yet?
                They promised me
    It should be here by nightfall.
                    One of you go
    And hasten it. I can hold back
    Death till dawn.

    Have they not brought it yet?--from Nuremberg.
    Do not deceive me. I must know it safe,
    Printed and safe, for other men to use.
    I could die then. My use would be fulfilled.
    What has delayed them? Will not some one go
    And tell them that my strength is running out?
    Tell them that book would be an angel's hand
    In mine, an easier pillow for my head,
    A little lantern in the engulfing dark.
    You see, I hid its struggling light so long
    Under too small a bushel, and I fear
    It may go out forever. In the noon
    Of life's brief day, I could not see the need
    As now I see it, when the night shuts down.
    I was afraid, perhaps, it might confuse
    The lights that guide us for the souls of men.

    But now I see three stages in our life.
    At first, we bask contented in our sun
    And take what daylight shows us for the truth.
    Then we discover, in some midnight grief,
    How all day long the sunlight blinded us
    To depths beyond, where all our knowledge dies.
    That's where men shrink, and lose their way in doubt.
    Then, last, as death draws nearer, comes a night
    In whose majestic shadow men see God,
    Absolute Knowledge, reconciling all.
    So, all my life I pondered on that scheme
    Which makes this earth the centre of all worlds,
    Lighted and wheeled around by sun and moon
    And that great crystal sphere wherein men thought
    Myriads of lesser stars were fixed like lamps,
    Each in its place,--one mighty glittering wheel
    Revolving round this dark abode of man.
    Night after night, with even pace they moved.
    Year after year, not altering by one point,
    Their order, or their stations, those fixed stars
    In that revolving firmament. The Plough
    Still pointed to the Pole. Fixed in their sphere,
    How else explain that vast unchanging wheel?
    How, but by thinking all those lesser lights
    Were huger suns, divided from our earth
    By so immense a gulf that, if they moved
    Ten thousand leagues an hour among themselves,
    It would not seem one hair's-breadth to our eyes.
    Utterly inconceivable, I know;
    And yet we daily kneel to boundless Power
    And build our hope on that Infinitude.

    This did not daunt me, then. Indeed, I saw
    Light upon chaos. Many discordant dreams
    Began to move in lucid music now.
    For what could be more baffling than the thought
    That those enormous heavens must circle earth
    Diurnally--a journey that would need
    Swiftness to which the lightning flash would seem
    A white slug creeping on the walls of night;
    While, if earth softly on her axle spun
    One quiet revolution answered all.
    It was our moving selves that made the sky
    Seem to revolve. Have not all ages seen
    A like illusion baffling half mankind
    In life, thought, art? Men think, at every turn
    Of their own souls, the very heavens have moved.

    Light upon chaos, light, and yet more light;
    For--as I watched the planets--Venus, Mars,
    Appeared to wax and wane from month to month
    As though they moved, now near, now far, from earth.
    Earth could not be their centre. Was the sun
    Their sovran lord then, as Pythagoras held?
    Was this great earth, so 'stablished, so secure,
    A planet also? Did it also move
    Around the sun? If this were true, my friends,
    No revolution in this world's affairs,
    Not that blind maelstrom where imperial Rome
    Went down into the dark, could so engulf
    All that we thought we knew. We who believed
    In our own majesty, we who walked with gods
    As younger sons on this proud central stage,
    Round which the whole bright firmament revolved
    For our especial glory, must we creep
    Like ants upon our midget ball of dust
    Lost in immensity?
                 I could not take
    That darkness lightly. I withheld my book
    For many a year, until I clearly saw,
    And Rome approved me--have they not brought it yet?--
    That this tremendous music could not drown
    The still supernal music of the soul,
    Or quench the light that shone when Christ was born.
    For who, if one lost star could lead the kings
    To God's own Son, would shrink from following these
    To His eternal throne?
                         This at the least
    We know, the soul of man can soar through heaven.
    It is our own wild wings that dwarf the world
    To nothingness beneath us. Let the soul
    Take courage, then. If its own thought be true,
    Not all the immensities of little minds
    Can ever quench its own celestial fire.
    No. This new night was needed, that the soul
    Might conquer its own kingdom and arise
    To its full stature. So, in face of death,
    I saw that I must speak the truth I knew.

    Have they not brought it? What delays my book?
    I am afraid. Tell me the truth, my friends.
    At this last hour, the Church may yet withhold
    Her sanction. Not the Church, but those who think
    A little darkness helps her.
             Were this true,
    They would do well. If the poor light we win
    Confuse or blind us, to the Light of lights,
    Let all our wisdom perish. I affirm
    A greater Darkness, where the one true Church
    Shall after all her agonies of loss
    And many an age of doubt, perhaps, to come,
    See this processional host of splendours burn
    Like tapers round her altar.
             So I speak
    Not for myself, but for the age unborn.
    I caught the fire from those who went before,
    The bearers of the torch who could not see
    The goal to which they strained. I caught their fire,
    And carried it, only a little way beyond;
    But there are those that wait for it, I know,
    Those who will carry it on to victory.
    I dare not fail them. Looking back, I see
    Those others,--fallen, with their arms outstretched
    Dead, pointing to the future.
                Far, far back,
    Before the Egyptians built their pyramids
    With those dark funnels pointing to the north,
    Through which the Pharaohs from their desert tombs
    Gaze all night long upon the Polar Star,
    Some wandering Arab crept from death to life
    Led by the Plough across those wastes of pearl....

    Long, long ago--have they not brought it yet?
    My book?--I finished it one summer's night,
    And felt my blood all beating into song.
    I meant to print those verses in my book,
    A prelude, hinting at that deeper night
    Which darkens all our knowledge. Then I thought
    The measure moved too lightly.
                 Do you recall
    Those verses, Elsa? They would pass the time.
    How happy I was the night I wrote that song!"
    Then, one of those bowed shadows raised her head
    And, like a mother crooning to her child,
    Murmured the words he wrote, so long ago.

    In old Cathay, in far Cathay,
        Before the western world began,
    They saw the moving fount of day
        Eclipsed, as by a shadowy fan;
    They stood upon their Chinese wall.
        They saw his fire to ashes fade,
    And felt the deeper slumber fall
        On domes of pearl and towers of jade.

    With slim brown hands, in Araby,
        They traced, upon the desert sand,
    Their Rams and Scorpions of the sky,
        And strove--and failed--to understand.
    Before their footprints were effaced
        The shifting sand forgot their rune;
    Their hieroglyphs were all erased,
        Their desert naked to the moon.

    In Bagdad of the purple nights,
        Haroun Al Raschid built a tower,
    Where sages watched a thousand lights
        And read their legends, for an hour.
    The tower is down, the Caliph dead,
        Their astrolabes are wrecked with rust.
    Orion glitters overhead,
        Aladdin's lamp is in the dust.

    In Babylon, in Babylon,
        They baked their tablets of the clay;
    And, year by year, inscribed thereon
        The dark eclipses of their day;
    They saw the moving finger write
        Its Mene, Mene, on their sun.
    A mightier shadow cloaks their light,
        And clay is clay in Babylon.

    A shadow moved towards him from the door.
    Copernicus, with a cry, upraised his head.
    "The book, I cannot see it, let me feel
    The lettering on the cover.
            It is here!
    Put out the lamp, now. Draw those curtains back,
    And let me die with starlight on my face.
    An angel's hand in mine . . . yes; I can say
    My nunc dimittis now . . . light, and more light
    In that pure realm whose darkness is our peace."




    II

    Tycho Brake


    I


    They thought him a magician, Tycho Brahe,
    Who lived on that strange island in the Sound,
    Nine miles from Elsinore.
                                His legend reached
    The Mermaid Inn the year that Shakespeare died.
    Fynes Moryson had brought his travellers' tales
    Of Wheen, the heart-shaped isle where Tycho made
    His great discoveries, and, with Jeppe, his dwarf,
    And flaxen-haired Christine, the peasant girl,
    Dreamed his great dreams for five-and-twenty years.
    For there he lit that lanthorn of the law,
    Uraniborg; that fortress of the truth,
    With Pegasus flying above its loftiest tower,
    While, in its roofs, like wide enchanted eyes
    Watching, the brightest windows in the world,
    Opened upon the stars.

    Nine miles from Elsinore, with all those ghosts,
    There's magic enough in that! But white-cliffed Wheen,
    Six miles in girth, with crowds of hunchback waves
    Crawling all round it, and those moonstruck windows,
    Held its own magic, too; for Tycho Brahe
    By his mysterious alchemy of dreams
    Had so enriched the soil, that when the king
    Of England wished to buy it, Denmark asked
    A price too great for any king on earth.
    "Give us," they said, "in scarlet cardinal's cloth
    Enough to cover it, and, at every corner,
    Of every piece, a right rose-noble too;
    Then all that kings can buy of Wheen is yours.
    Only," said they, "a merchant bought it once;
    And, when he came to claim it, goblins flocked
    All round him, from its forty goblin farms,
    And mocked him, bidding him take away the stones
    That he had bought, for nothing else was his."
    These things were fables. They were also true.
    They thought him a magician, Tycho Brahe,
    The astrologer, who wore the mask of gold.
    Perhaps he was. There's magic in the truth;
    And only those who find and follow its laws
    Can work its miracles.
                         Tycho sought the truth
    From that strange year in boyhood when he heard
    The great eclipse foretold; and, on the day
    Appointed, at the very minute even,
    Beheld the weirdly punctual shadow creep
    Across the sun, bewildering all the birds
    With thoughts of evening.
                                Picture him, on that day,
    The boy at Copenhagen, with his mane
    Of thick red hair, thrusting his freckled face
    Out of his upper window, holding the piece
    Of glass he blackened above his candle-flame
    To watch that orange ember in the sky
    Wane into smouldering ash.
                                 He whispered there,
    "So it is true. By searching in the heavens,
    Men can foretell the future."
                In the street
    Below him, throngs were babbling of the plague
    That might or might not follow.
                    He resolved
    To make himself the master of that deep art
    And know what might be known.
                He bought the books
    Of Stadius, with his tables of the stars.
    Night after night, among the gabled roofs,
    Climbing and creeping through a world unknown
    Save to the roosting stork, he learned to find
    The constellations, Cassiopeia's throne,
    The Plough still pointing to the Polar Star,
    The sword-belt of Orion. There he watched
    The movements of the planets, hours on hours,
    And wondered at the mystery of it all.
    All this he did in secret, for his birth
    Was noble, and such wonderings were a sign
    Of low estate, when Tycho Brahe was young;
    And all his kinsmen hoped that Tycho Brahe
    Would live, serene as they, among his dogs
    And horses; or, if honour must be won,
    Let the superfluous glory flow from fields
    Where blood might still be shed; or from those courts
    Where statesmen lie. But Tycho sought the truth.
    So, when they sent him in his tutor's charge
    To Leipzig, for such studies as they held
    More worthy of his princely blood, he searched
    The Almagest; and, while his tutor slept,
    Measured the delicate angles of the stars,
    Out of his window, with his compasses,
    His only instrument. Even with this rude aid
    He found so many an ancient record wrong
    That more and more he burned to find the truth.

    One night at home, as Tycho searched the sky,
    Out of his window, compasses in hand,
    Fixing one point upon a planet, one
    Upon some loftier star, a ripple of laughter
    Startled him, from the garden walk below.
    He lowered his compass, peered into the dark
    And saw--Christine, the blue-eyed peasant girl,
    With bare brown feet, standing among the flowers.
    She held what seemed an apple in her hand;
    And, in a voice that Aprilled all his blood,
    The low soft voice of earth, drawing him down
    From those cold heights to that warm breast of Spring,
    A natural voice that had not learned to use
    The false tones of the world, simple and clear
    As a bird's voice, out of the fragrant darkness called,
    "I saw it falling from your window-ledge!
    I thought it was an apple, till it rolled
    Over my foot.
        It's heavy. Shall I try
    To throw it back to you?"
                                Tycho saw a stain
    Of purple across one small arched glistening foot.
    "Your foot Is bruised," he cried.
                        "O no," she laughed,
    And plucked the stain off. "Only a petal, see."
    She showed it to him.
                        "But this--I wonder now
    If I can throw it."
                    Twice she tried and failed;
    Or Tycho failed to catch that slippery sphere.
    He saw the supple body swaying below,
    The ripe red lips that parted as she laughed,
    And those deep eyes where all the stars were drowned.

    At the third time he caught it; and she vanished,
    Waving her hand, a little floating moth,
    Between the pine-trees, into the warm dark night.
    He turned into his room, and quickly thrust
    Under his pillow that forbidden fruit;
    For the door opened, and the hot red face
    Of Otto Brahe, his father, glowered at him.
    "What's this? What's this?"
            The furious-eyed old man
    Limped to the bedside, pulled the mystery out,
    And stared upon the strangest apple of Eve
    That ever troubled Eden,--heavy as bronze,
    And delicately enchased with silver stars,
    The small celestial globe that Tycho bought
    In Leipzig.
                            Then the storm burst on his head!
    This moon-struck 'pothecary's-prentice    work,
    These cheap-jack calendar-maker's gypsy tricks
    Would damn the mother of any Knutsdorp squire,
    And crown his father like a stag of ten.
    Quarrel on quarrel followed from that night,
    Till Tycho sickened of his ancient name;
    And, wandering through the woods about his home,
    Found on a hill-top, ringed with fragrant pines,
    A little open glade of whispering ferns.
    Thither, at night, he stole to watch the stars;
    And there he told the oldest tale on earth
    To one that watched beside him, one whose eyes
    Shone with true love, more beautiful than the stars,
    A daughter of earth, the peasant-girl, Christine.

    They met there, in the dusk, on his last night
    At home, before he went to Wittenberg.
    They stood knee-deep among the whispering ferns,
    And said good-bye.
                 "I shall return," he said,
    "And shame them for their folly, who would set
    Their pride above the stars, Christine, and you.
    At Wittenberg or Rostoch I shall find
    More chances and more knowledge. All those worlds
    Are still to conquer. We know nothing yet;
    The books are crammed with fables. They foretell
    Here an eclipse, and there a dawning moon,
    But most of them were out a month or more
    On Jupiter and Saturn.
                         There's one way,
    And only one, to knowledge of the law
    Whereby the stars are steered, and so to read
    The future, even perhaps the destinies
    Of men and nations,--only one sure way,
    And that's to watch them, watch them, and record
    The truth we know, and not the lies we dream.
    Dear, while I watch them, though the hills and sea
    Divide us, every night our eyes can meet
    Among those constant glories. Every night
    Your eyes and mine, upraised to that bright realm,
    Can, in one moment, speak across the world.
    I shall come back with knowledge and with power,
    And you--will wait for me?"
            She answered him
    In silence, with the starlight of her eyes.




    II


    He watched the skies at Wittenberg. The plague
    Drove him to Rostoch, and he watched them there;
    But, even there, the plague of little minds
    Beset him. At a wedding-feast he met
    His noble countryman, Manderup, who asked,
    With mocking courtesy, whether Tycho Brahe
    Was ready yet to practise his black art
    At country fairs. The guests, and Tycho, laughed;
    Whereat the swaggering Junker blandly sneered,
    "If fortune-telling fail, Christine will dance,
    Thus--tambourine on hip," he struck a pose.
    "Her pretty feet will pack that booth of yours."
    They fought, at midnight, in a wood, with swords.
    And not a spark of light but those that leapt
    Blue from the clashing blades. Tycho had lost
    His moon and stars awhile, almost his life;
    For, in one furious bout, his enemy's blade
    Dashed like a scribble of lightning into the face
    Of Tycho Brahe, and left him spluttering blood,
    Groping through that dark wood with outstretched hands,
    To fall in a death-black swoon.
                    They carried him back
    To Rostoch; and when Tycho saw at last
    That mirrored patch of mutilated flesh,
    Seared as by fire, between the frank blue eyes
    And firm young mouth where, like a living flower
    Upon some stricken tree, youth lingered still,
    He'd but one thought, Christine would shrink from him
    In fear, or worse, in pity. An end had come
    Worse than old age, to all the glory of youth.
    Urania would not let her lover stray
    Into a mortal's arms. He must remain
    Her own, for ever; and for ever, alone.

    Yet, as the days went by, to face the world,
    He made himself a delicate mask of gold
    And silver, shaped like those that minstrels wear
    At carnival in Venice, or when love,
    Disguising its disguise of mortal flesh,
    Wooes as a nameless prince from far away.
    And when this world's day, with its blaze and coil
    Was ended, and the first white star awoke
    In that pure realm where all our tumults die,
    His eyes and hers, meeting on Hesperus,
    Renewed their troth.
                     He seemed to see Christine,
    Ringed by the pine-trees on that distant hill,
    A small white figure, lost in space and time,
    Yet gazing at the sky, and conquering all,
    Height, depth, and heaven itself, by the sheer power
    Of love at one with everlasting laws,
    A love that shared the constancy of heaven,
    And spoke to him across, above, the world.




    III


    Not till he crossed the Danube did he find
    Among the fountains and the storied eaves
    Of Augsburg, one to share his task with him.
    Paul Hainzel, of that city, greatly loved
    To talk with Tycho of the strange new dreams
    Copernicus had kindled. Did this earth
    Move? Was the sun the centre of our scheme?
    And Tycho told him, there is but one way
    To know the truth, and that's to sweep aside
    All the dark cobwebs of old sophistry,
    And watch and learn that moving alphabet,
    Each smallest silver character inscribed
    Upon the skies themselves, noting them down,
    Till on a day we find them taking shape
    In phrases, with a meaning; and, at last,
    The hard-won beauty of that celestial book
    With all its epic harmonies unfold
    Like some great poet's universal song.

    He was a great magician, Tycho Brahe.
    "Hainzel," he said, "we have no magic wand,
    But what the truth can give us. If we find
    Even with a compass, through a bedroom window,
    That half the glittering Almagest is wrong,
    Think you, what noble conquests might be ours,
    Had we but nobler instruments."
                    He showed
    Quivering with eagerness, his first rude plan
    For that great quadrant,--not the wooden toy
    Of old Scultetus, but a kingly weapon,
    Huge as a Roman battering-ram, and fine
    In its divisions as any goldsmith's work.
    "It could be built," said Tycho, "but the cost
    Would buy a dozen culverin for your wars."
    Then Hainzel, fired by Tycho's burning brain,
    Answered, "We'll make it We've a war to wage
    On Chaos, and his kingdoms of the night."
    They chose the cunningest artists of the town,
    Clock-makers, jewellers, carpenters, and smiths,
    And, setting them all afire with Tycho's dream,
    Within a month his dream was oak and brass.
    Its beams were fourteen cubits, solid oak,
    Banded with iron. Its arch was polished brass
    Whereon five thousand exquisite divisions
    Were marked to show the minutes of degrees.

    So huge and heavy it was, a score of men,
    Could hardly drag and fix it to its place
    In Hainzel's garden.
                     Many a shining night,
    Tycho and Hainzel, out of that maze of flowers,
    Charted the stars, discovering point by point,
    How all the records erred, until the fame
    Of this new master, hovering above the schools
    Like a strange hawk, threatened the creeping dreams
    Of all the Aristotelians, and began
    To set their mouse-holes twittering "Tycho Brahe!"

    Then Tycho Brahe came home, to find Christine.
    Up to that whispering glade of ferns he sped,
    At the first wink of Hesperus.
                    He stood
    In shadow, under the darkest pine, to hide
    The little golden mask upon his face.
    He wondered, will she shrink from me in fear
    Or loathing? Will she even come at all?
    And, as he wondered, like a light she moved
    Before him.
                            "Is it you?"--
                                 "Christine! Christine,"
    He whispered, "It is I, the mountebank,
    Playing a jest upon you. It's only a mask!
    Do not be frightened. I am here behind it."

    Her red lips parted, and between them shone,
    The little teeth like white pomegranate seeds.
    He saw her frightened eyes.
            Then, with a cry,
    Her arms went round him, and her eyelids closed.
    Lying against his heart, she set her lips
    Against his lips, and claimed him for her own.




    IV


    One frosty night, as Tycho bent his way
    Home to the dark old abbey, he upraised
    His eyes, and saw a portent in the sky.
    There, in its most familiar patch of blue,
    Where Cassiopeia's five-fold glory burned,
    An unknown brilliance quivered, a huge star
    Unseen before, a strange new visitant
    To heavens unchangeable, as the world believed,
    Since the creation.
                    Could new stars be born?
    Night after night he watched that miracle
    Growing and changing colour as it grew;
    White at the first, and large as Jupiter;
    And, in the third month, yellow, and larger yet;
    Red in the fifth month, like Aldebaran,
    And larger even than Lyra. In the seventh,
    Bluish like Saturn; whence it dulled and dwined
    Little by little, till after eight months more
    Into the dark abysmal blue of night,
    Whence it arose, the wonder died away.
    But, while it blazed above him, Tycho brought
    Those delicate records of two hundred nights
    To Copenhagen. There, in his golden mask,
    At supper with Pratensis, who believed
    Only what old books told him, Tycho met
    Dancey, the French Ambassador, rainbow-gay
    In satin hose and doublet, supple and thin,
    Brown-eyed, and bearded with a soft black tuft
    Neat as a blackbird's wing,--a spirit as keen
    And swift as France on all the starry trails
    Of thought.
                            He saw the deep and simple fire,
    The mystery of all genius in those eyes
    Above that golden wizard.
                                Tycho raised
    His wine-cup, brimming--they thought--with purple dreams;
    And bade them drink to their triumphant Queen
    Of all the Muses, to their Lady of Light
    Urania, and the great new star.
                    They laughed,
    Thinking the young astrologer's golden mask
    Hid a sardonic jest.
                     "The skies are clear,"
    Said Tycho Brahe, "and we have eyes to see.
    Put out your candles. Open those windows there!"
    The colder darkness breathed upon their brows,
    And Tycho pointed, into the deep blue night.
    There, in their most immutable height of heaven,
    In ipso caelo, in the ethereal realm,
    Beyond all planets, red as Mars it burned,
    The one impossible glory.
                                "But it's true!"
    Pratensis gasped; then, clutching the first straw,
    "Now I recall how Pliny the Elder said,
    Hipparchus also saw a strange new star,
    Not where the comets, not where the Rosae bloom
    And fade, but in that solid crystal sphere
    Where nothing changes."
                            Tycho smiled, and showed
    The record of his watchings.
             "But the world
    Must know all this," cried Dancey. "You must print it."
    "Print it?" said Tycho, turning that golden mask
    On both his friends. "Could I, a noble, print
    This trafficking with Urania in a book?
    They'd hound me out of Denmark! This disgrace
    Of work, with hands or brain, no matter why,
    No matter how, in one who ought to dwell
    Fixed to the solid upper sphere, my friends,
    Would never be forgiven."
                                Dancey stared
    In mute amazement, but that mask of gold
    Outstared him, sphinx-like, and inscrutable.

    Soon through all Europe, like the blinded moths,
    Roused by a lantern in old palaces
    Among the mouldering tapestries of thought,
    Weird fables woke and fluttered to and fro,
    And wild-eyed sages hunted them for truth.
    The Italian, Frangipani, thought the star
    The lost Electra, that had left her throne
    Among the Pleiads, and plunged into the night
    Like a veiled mourner, when Troy town was burned.
    The German painter, Busch, of Erfurt, wrote,
    "It was a comet, made of mortal sins;
    A poisonous mist, touched by the wrath of God
    To fire; from which there would descend on earth
    All manner of evil--plagues and sudden death,
    Frenchmen and famine."
                         Preachers thumped and raved.
    Theodore Beza in Calvin's pulpit tore
    His grim black gown, and vowed it was the Star
    That led the Magi. It had now returned
    To mark the world's end and the Judgment Day.
    Then, in this hubbub, Dancey told the king
    Of Denmark, "There is one who knows the truth--
    Your subject Tycho Brahe, who, night by night,
    Watched and recorded all that truth could see.
    It would bring honour to all Denmark, sire,
    If Tycho could forget his rank awhile,
    And print these great discoveries in a book,
    For all the world to read."
            So Tycho Brahe
    Received a letter in the king's own hand,
    Urging him, "Truth is the one pure fountain-head
    Of all nobility. Pray forget your rank."
    His noble kinsmen echoed, "If you wish
    To please His Majesty and ourselves, forget
    Your rank."
                            "I will," said Tycho Brahe;
    "Your reasoning has convinced me. I will print
    My book, 'De Nova Stella.' And to prove
    All you have said concerning temporal rank
    And this eternal truth you love so well,
    I marry, to-day,"--they foamed, but all their mouths
    Were stopped and stuffed and sealed with their own words,--
    "I marry to-day my own true love, Christine."




    V


    They thought him a magician, Tycho Brahe.
    Perhaps he was. There's magic all around us
    In rocks and trees, and in the minds of men,
    Deep hidden springs of magic.
                He that strikes
    The rock aright, may find them where he will.

    And Tycho tasted happiness in his hour.
    There was a prince in Denmark in those days;
    And, when he heard how other kings desired
    The secrets of this new astrology,
    He said, "This man, in after years, will bring
    Glory to Denmark, honour to her prince.
    He is a Dane. Give him this isle of Wheen,
    And let him make his great discoveries there.
    Let him have gold to buy his instruments,
    And build his house and his observatory."

    So Tycho set this island where he lived
    Whispering with wizardry; and, in its heart,
    He lighted that strange lanthorn of the law,
    And built himself that wonder of the world,
    Uraniborg, a fortress for the truth,
    A city of the heavens.
                         Around it ran
    A mighty rampart twenty-two feet high,
    And twenty feet in thickness at the base.
    Its angles pointed north, south, east and west,
    With gates and turrets; and, within this wall,
    Were fruitful orchards, apple, and cherry, and pear;
    And, sheltered in their midst from all but sun,
    A garden, warm and busy with singing bees.
    There, many an hour, his flaxen-haired Christine,
    Sang to her child, her first-born, Magdalen,
    Or watched her playing, a flower among the flowers.
    Dark in the centre of that zone of bliss
    Arose the magic towers of Tycho Brahe.
    Two of them had great windows in their roofs
    Opening upon the sky where'er he willed,
    And under these observatories he made
    A library of many a golden book;
    Poets and sages of old Greece and Rome,
    And many a mellow legend, many a dream
    Of dawning truth in Egypt, or the dusk
    Of Araby. Under all of these he made
    A subterranean crypt for alchemy,
    With sixteen furnaces; and, under this,
    He sank a well, so deep, that Jeppe declared
    He had tapped the central fountains of the world,
    And drew his magic from those cold clear springs.
    This was the very well, said Jeppe, the dwarf,
    Where Truth was hidden; but, by Tycho Brahe
    And his weird skill, the magic water flowed,
    Through pipes, uphill, to all the house above:
    The kitchen where his cooks could broil a trout
    For sages or prepare a feast for kings;
    The garrets for the students in the roof;
    The guest-rooms, and the red room to the north,
    The study and the blue room to the south;
    The small octagonal yellow room that held
    The sunlight like a jewel all day long,
    And Magdalen, with her happy dreams, at night;
    Then, facing to the west, one long green room,
    The ceiling painted like the bower of Eve
    With flowers and leaves, the windows opening wide
    Through which Christine and Tycho Brahe at dawn
    Could see the white sails drifting on the Sound
    Like petals from their orchard.
                    To the north,
    He built a printing house for noble books,
    Poems, and those deep legends of the sky,
    Still to be born at his Uraniborg.
    Beyond the rampart to the north arose
    A workshop for his instruments. To the south
    A low thatched farm-house rambled round a yard
    Alive with clucking hens; and, further yet
    To southward on another hill, he made
    A great house for his larger instruments,
    And called it Stiernborg, mountain of the stars.

    And, on his towers and turrets, Tycho set
    Statues with golden verses in the praise
    Of famous men, the bearers of the torch,
    From Ptolemy to the new Copernicus.
    Then, in that storm-proof mountain of the stars,
    He set in all their splendour of new-made brass
    His armouries for the assault of heaven,--
    Circles in azimuth, armillary spheres,
    Revolving zodiacs with great brazen rings;
    Quadrants of solid brass, ten cubits broad,
    Brass parallactic rules, made to revolve
    In azimuth; clocks with wheels; an astrolabe;
    And that large globe strengthened by oaken beams
    He made at Augsburg.
                     All his gold he spent;
    But Denmark had a prince in those great days;
    And, in his brain, the dreams of Tycho Brahe
    Kindled a thirst for glory. So he made
    Tycho the Lord of sundry lands and rents,
    And Keeper of the Chapel where the kings
    Of Oldenburg were buried; for he said
    "To whom could all these kings entrust their bones
    More fitly than to him who read the stars,
    And though a mortal, knew immortal laws;
    And paced, at night, the silent halls of heaven."




    VI


    He was a great magician, Tycho Brahe.
    There, on his island, for a score of years,
    He watched the skies, recording star on star,
    For future ages, and, by patient toil,
    Perfected his great tables of the sun,
    The moon, the planets.
                         There, too happy far
    For any history, sons and daughters rose,
    A little clan of love, around Christine;
    And Tycho thought, when I am dead, my sons
    Will rule and work in my Uraniborg.
    And yet a doubt would trouble him, for he knew
    The children of Christine would still be held
    Ignoble, by the world.
                         Disciples came,
    Young-eyed and swift, the bearers of the torch
    From many a city to Uraniborg,
    And Tycho Brahe received them like a king,
    And bade them light their torches at his fire.
    The King of Scotland came, with all his court,
    And dwelt eight days in Tycho Brahe's domain,
    Asking him many a riddle, deep and dark,
    Whose answer, none the less, a king should know.
    What boots it on this earth to be a king,
    To rule a part of earth, and not to know
    The worth of his own realm, whether he rule
    As God's vice-gerent, and his realm be still
    The centre of the centre of all worlds;
    Or whether, as Copernicus proclaimed,
    This earth itself be moving, a lost grain
    Of dust among the innumerable stars?
    For this would dwarf all glory but the soul,
    In king or peasant, that can hail the truth,
    Though truth should slay it.
             So to Tycho Brahe,
    The king became a subject for eight days.
    But, in the crowded hall, when he had gone,
    Jeppe raised his matted head, with a chuckle of glee,
    Quiet as the gurgle of joy in a dark rock-pool,
    When the first ripple and wash of the first spring-tide
    Flows bubbling under the dry sun-blackened fringe
    Of seaweed, setting it all afloat again,
    In magical colours, like a merman's hair.
    "Jeppe has a thought," the gay young students cried,
    Thronging him round, for all believed that Jeppe
    Was fey, and had strange visions of the truth.
    "What is the thought, Jeppe?"
                "I can think no thoughts,"
    Croaked Jeppe. "But I have made myself a song."
    "Silence," they cried, "for Jeppe the nightingale!
    Sing, Jeppe!"
        And, wagging his great head to and fro
    Before the fire, with deep dark eyes, he crooned:

            THE SONG OF JEPPE

    "What!" said the king,
         "Is earth a bird or bee?
     Can this uncharted boundless realm of ours
    Drone thro' the sky, with leagues of struggling sea,
        Forests, and hills, and towns, and palace-towers?"
     "Ay," said the dwarf,
         "I have watched from Stiernborg's crown
        Her far dark rim uplift against the sky;
    But, while earth soars, men say the stars    go down;
        And, while earth sails, men say the stars go by."
    An elvish tale!
            Ask Jeppe, the dwarf! He knows.
        That's why his eyes look fey; for, chuckling deep,
    Heels over head amongst the stars he goes,
        As all men go; but most are sound asleep.
    King, saint, sage,
            Even those that count it true,
        Act as this miracle touched them not at all.
    They are borne, undizzied, thro' the rushing blue,
        And build their empires on a sky-tossed ball.

    Then said the king,
            "If earth so lightly move,
        What of my realm? O, what shall now stand sure?"
    "Naught," said the dwarf, "in all this world, but love.
        All else is dream-stuff and shall not endure.
    'Tis nearer now!
            Our universe hath no centre,
        Our shadowy earth and fleeting heavens no stay,
    But that deep inward realm which each can enter,
        Even Jeppe, the dwarf, by his own secret way."

    "Where?" said the king,
            "O, where? I have not found it!"
        "Here," said the dwarf, and music echoed "here."
    "This infinite circle hath no line to bound it;
        Therefore that deep strange centre is everywhere.
    Let the earth soar thro' heaven, that centre abideth;
        Or plunge to the pit, His covenant still holds true.
    In the heart of a dying bird, the Master hideth;
        In the soul of a king," said the dwarf,
            "and in my soul, too."




    VII


    Princes and courtiers came, a few to seek
    A little knowledge, many more to gape
    In wonder at Tycho's gold and silver mask;
    Or when they saw the beauty of his towers,
    Envy and hate him for them.
            Thus arose
    The small grey cloud upon the distant sky,
    That broke in storm at last.
             "Beware," croaked Jeppe,
    Lifting his shaggy head beside the fire,
    When guests like these had gone, "Master, beware!"
    And Tycho of the frank blue eyes would laugh.
    Even when he found Witichius playing him false
        His anger, like a momentary breeze,
    Died on the dreaming deep; for Tycho Brahe
    Turned to a nobler riddle,--"Have you thought,"
    He asked his young disciples, "how the sea
    Is moved to that strange rhythm we call the tides?
    He that can answer this shall have his name
    Honoured among the bearers of the torch
    While Pegasus flies above Uraniborg.
    I was delayed three hours or more to-day
    By the neap-tide. The fishermen on the coast
    Are never wrong. They time it by the moon.
    Post hoc, perhaps, not propter hoc; and yet
    Through all the changes of the sky and sea
    That old white clock of ours with the battered face
    Does seem infallible.
                        There's a love-song too,
    The sailors on the coast of Sweden sing,
    I have often pondered it. Your courtly poets
    Upbraid the inconstant moon. But these men know
    The moon and sea are lovers, and they move
    In a most constant measure. Hear the words
    And tell me, if you can, what silver chains
    Bind them together." Then, in a voice as low
    And rhythmical as the sea, he spoke that song:

            THE SHEPHERDESS OF THE SEA

        Reproach not yet our sails' delay;
        You cannot see the shoaling bay,
        The banks of sand, the fretful bars,
        That ebb left naked to the stars.
            The sea's white shepherdess, the moon,
            Shall lead us into harbour soon.

        Dear, when you see her glory shine
        Between your fragrant boughs of pine,
        Know there is but one hour to wait
        Before her hands unlock the gate,
            And the full flood of singing foam
            Follow her lovely footsteps home.

        Then waves like flocks of silver sheep
        Come rustling inland from the deep,
        And into rambling valleys press
        Behind their heavenly shepherdess.
            You cannot see them? Lift your eyes
            And see their mistress in the skies.
        She rises with her silver bow.

        I feel the tide begin to flow;
        And every thought and hope and dream
        Follow her call, and homeward stream.
        Borne on the universal tide,
        The wanderer hastens to his bride.
            The sea's white shepherdess, the moon,
            Shall lead him into harbour, soon.




    VIII


    He was a great magician, Tycho Brahe,
    But not so great that he could read the heart
    Or rule the hand of princes.
             When his friend
    King Frederick died, the young Prince Christian reigned;
    And, round him, fool and knave made common cause
    Against the magic that could pour their gold
    Into a gulf of stars. This Tycho Brahe
    Had grown too proud. He held them in contempt,
    So they believed; for, when he spoke, their thoughts
    Crept at his feet like spaniels. Junkerdom
    Felt it was foolish, for he towered above it,
    And so it hated him. Did he not spend
    Gold that a fool could spend as quickly as he?
    Were there not great estates bestowed upon him
    In wisdom's name, that from the dawn of time
    Had been the natural right of Junkerdom?
    And would he not bequeath them to his heirs,
    The children of Christine, an unfree woman?
    "Why you, sire, even you," they told the king,
   

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Type of Poem: Narrative Poem

Date Written:

Date Published:

Language: English

Keywords: Public Domain

Source: Public Domain Collection

Publisher:

Rights/Permissions: Public Domain

Comments/Notes:     PROLOGUE