Chapter 6 No.6

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."