Part 2 (1/2)

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 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-n.o.ble 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 gla.s.s 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, Ca.s.siopeia'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 n.o.ble, 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 compa.s.ses, 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, compa.s.ses 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 compa.s.s, 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 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 d.a.m.n 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.