Chapter 2
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 BRAHE
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.