Watchers of the Sky

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."

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.

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.