Watchers of the Sky | Page 8

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