Watchers of the Sky | Page 6

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 BRAKE
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