Watchers of the Sky | Page 5

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,