Part 5 (1/2)

We are on the verge of great discoveries.

I feel them as a dreamer feels the dawn Before his eyes are opened. Many of you Will see them. In that day you will recall This, our last meeting at Uraniborg, And how I told you that this work of ours Would lead to victories for the coming age.

The victors may forget us. What of that?

Theirs be the palms, the shouting, and the praise.

Ours be the fathers' glory in the sons.

Ours the delight of giving, the deep joy Of labouring, on the cliff's face, all night long, Cutting them foot-holes in the solid rock, Whereby they climb so gaily to the heights, And gaze upon their new-discovered worlds.

You will not find me there. When you descend, Look for me in the darkness at the foot Of those high cliffs, under the drifted leaves.

That's where we hide at last, we pioneers, For we are very proud, and must be sought Before the world can find us, in our graves.

There have been compensations. I have seen In darkness, more perhaps than eyes can see When sunlight blinds them on the mountain-tops; Guessed at a glory past our mortal range, And only mine because the night was mine.

Of those three systems of the universe, The Ptolemaic, held by all the schools, May yet be proven false. We yet may find This earth of ours is not the sovran lord Of all those wheeling spheres. Ourselves have marked Movements among the planets that forbid Acceptance of it wholly. Some of these Are moving round the sun, if we can trust Our years of watching. There are stranger dreams.

This radical, Copernicus, the priest, Of whom I often talked with you, declares Ail of these movements can be reconciled, If--a hypothesis only--we should take The sun itself for centre, and a.s.sume That this huge earth, so 'stablished, so secure In its foundations, is a planet also, And moves around the sun.

I cannot think it.

This leap of thought is yet too great for me.

I have no doubt that Ptolemy was wrong.

Some of his planets move around the sun.

Copernicus is nearer to the truth In some things. But the planets we have watched Still wander from the course that he a.s.signed.

Therefore, my system, which includes the best Of both, I hold may yet be proven true.

This earth of ours, as Jeppe declared one day, So simply that we laughed, is 'much too big To move,' so let it be the centre still, And let the planets move around their sun; But let the sun with all its planets move Around our central earth.

This at the least Accords with all we know, and saves mankind From that enormous plunge into the night; Saves them from voyaging for ten thousand years Through boundless darkness without sight of land; Saves them from all that agony of loss, As one by one the beacon-fires of faith Are drowned in blackness.

I beseech you, then, Let me be proven wrong, before you take That darkness lightly. If at last you find The proven facts against me, take the plunge.

Launch out into that darkness. Let the lamps Of heaven, the glowing hearth-fires that we knew Die out behind you, while the freshening wind Blows on your brows, and overhead you see The stars of truth that lead you from your home.

I love this island,--every little glen, Hazel-wood, brook, and fish-pond; every bough And blossom in that garden; and I hoped To die here. But it is not chance, I know, That sends me wandering through the world again.

My use perhaps is ended; and the power That made me, breaks me.”

As he spoke, they saw The tears upon his face. He bowed his head And left them silent in the darkened room.

They saw his face no more.

The self-same hour, Tycho, Christine, and all their children, left Their island-home for even In their s.h.i.+p They took a few of the smaller instruments, And that most precious record of the stars, His legacy to the future. Into the night They vanished, leaving on the ghostly cliffs Only one dark, distorted, dog-like shape To watch them, sobbing, under its matted hair, ”Master, have you forgotten Jeppe, your dwarf?”

IX

He was a great magician, Tycho Brahe, And yet his magic, under changing skies, Could never change his heart, or touch the hills Of those far countries with the tints of home.

And, after many a month of wandering, He came to Prague; and, though with open hands Rodolphe received him, like an exiled king, A new Aeneas, exiled for the truth (For so they called him), none could heal the wounds That bled within, or lull his grief to sleep With that familiar whisper of the waves, Ebbing and flowing around Uraniborg.

Doggedly still he laboured; point by point, Crept on, with aching heart and burning brain, Until his table of the stars had reached The thousand that he hoped, to crown his toil.

But Christine heard him murmuring in the night, ”The work, the work! Not to have lived in vain!

Into whose hands can I entrust it all?

I thought to find him standing by the way, Waiting to seize the splendour from my hand, The swift, young-eyed runner with the torch.

Let me not live in vain, let me not fall Before I yield it to the appointed soul.”

And yet the Power that made and broke him heard: For, on a certain day, to Tycho came Another exile, guided through the dark Of Europe by the starlight in his eyes, Or that invisible hand which guides the world.

He asked him, as the runner with the torch Alone could ask, asked as a natural right For Tycho's hard-won life-work, those results, His tables of the stars. He gave his name Almost as one who told him, _It is I;_ And yet unconscious that he told; a name Not famous yet, though truth had marked him out Already, by his exile, as her own,-- The name of Johann Kepler.

”It was strange,”

Wrote Kepler, not long after, ”for I asked Unheard-of things, and yet he gave them to me As if I were his son. When first I saw him, We seemed to have known each other years ago In some forgotten world. I could not guess That Tycho Brahe was dying. He was quick Of temper, and we quarrelled now and then, Only to find ourselves more closely bound Than ever. I believe that Tycho died Simply of heartache for his native land.

For though he always met me with a smile, Or jest upon his lips, he could not sleep Or work, and often unawares I caught Odd little whispered phrases on his lips As if he talked to himself, in a kind of dream.

Yet I believe the clouds dispersed a little Around his death-bed, and with that strange joy Which comes in death, he saw the unchanging stars.

Christine was there. She held him in her arms.

I think, too, that he knew his work was safe.