Watchers of the Sky | Page 7

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