Watchers of the Sky | Page 9

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 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