Watchers of the Sky | Page 9

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.
Soon through all Europe, like the blinded moths,?Roused by a lantern in old palaces?Among the mouldering tapestries of thought,?Weird fables woke and fluttered to and fro,?And wild-eyed sages hunted them for truth.?The Italian, Frangipani, thought the star?The lost Electra, that had left her throne?Among the Pleiads, and plunged into the night?Like a veiled mourner, when Troy town was burned.?The German painter, Busch, of Erfurt, wrote,?"It was a comet, made of mortal sins;?A poisonous mist, touched by the wrath of God?To fire; from which there would descend on earth?All manner of evil--plagues and sudden death,?Frenchmen and famine."
Preachers thumped and raved.?Theodore Beza in Calvin's pulpit tore?His grim black gown, and vowed it was the Star?That led the Magi. It had now