Chapter 2 No.2

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.