Watchers of the Sky | Page 8

enchased with silver stars,

The small celestial globe that Tycho bought
In Leipzig.
Then the storm burst on his head!
This moon-struck
'pothecary's-prentice work,
These cheap-jack calendar-maker's gypsy
tricks
Would damn the mother of any Knutsdorp squire,
And crown
his father like a stag of ten.
Quarrel on quarrel followed from that
night,
Till Tycho sickened of his ancient name;
And, wandering
through the woods about his home,
Found on a hill-top, ringed with
fragrant pines,
A little open glade of whispering ferns.
Thither, at
night, he stole to watch the stars;
And there he told the oldest tale on
earth
To one that watched beside him, one whose eyes
Shone 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