He was a great magician, Tycho Brahe,But not so great that he could read the heartOr rule the hand of princes.When his friendKing Frederick died, the young Prince Christian reigned;And, round him, fool and knave made common causeAgainst the magic that could pour their goldInto a gulf of stars. This Tycho BraheHad grown too proud. He held them in contempt,So they believed; for, when he spoke, their thoughtsCrept at his feet like spaniels. JunkerdomFelt it was foolish, for he towered above it,And so it hated him. Did he not spendGold that a fool could spend as quickly as he?Were there not great estates bestowed upon himIn wisdom's name, that from the dawn of timeHad been the natural right of Junkerdom?And would he not bequeath them to his heirs,The children of Christine, an unfree woman?"Why you, sire, even you," they told the king,"He has made a laughing-stock. That horoscopeHe read for you, the night when you were born,Printed, and bound it in green velvet, too,—Read it The whole world laughs at it. He saidThat Venus was the star that ruled your fate,And Venus would destroy you. Tycho BraheInspired your royal father with the fearThat kept your youth so long in leading-strings,The fear that every pretty hedgerow flowerWould be your Circe. So he thought to avengeOur mockery of this peasant-girl Christine,To whom, indeed, he plays the faithful swine,Knowing full well his gold and silver noseWould never win another."Thus the skyDarkened above Uraniborg, and thoseWho dwelt within it, till one evil day,One seeming happy day, when Tycho markedThe seven-hundredth star upon his chart,Two pompous officers from Walchendorp,The chancellor, knocked at Tycho's eastern gate."We are sent," they said, "to see and to reportWhat use you make of these estates of yours.Your alchemy has turned more gold to leadThan Denmark can approve. The uses now!Show us the uses of this work of yours."Then Tycho showed his tables of the stars,Seven hundred stars, each noted in its placeWith exquisite precision, the resultOf watching heaven for five-and-twenty years."And is this all?" they said.They sought to inventSome ground for damning him. The truth aloneWould serve them, as it seemed. For these were menWho could not understand."Not all, I hope,"Said Tycho, "for I think, before I die,I shall have marked a thousand.""To what end?When shall we reap the fruits of all this toil?Show us its uses.""In the time to come,"Said Tycho Brahe, "perhaps a hundred years,Perhaps a thousand, when our own poor namesAre quite forgotten, and our kingdoms dust,On one sure certain day, the torch-bearersWill, at some point of contact, see a lightMoving upon this chaos. Though our eyesBe shut for ever in an iron sleep,Their eyes shall see the kingdom of the law,Our undiscovered cosmos. They shall see it—A new creation rising from the deep,Beautiful, whole.We are like men that hearDisjointed notes of some supernal choir.Year after year, we patiently recordAll we can gather. In that far-off time,A people that we have not known shall hear them,Moving like music to a single end."
They could not understand: this life that soughtOnly to bear the torch and hand it on;And so they made report that all the dreamsOf Tycho Brahe were fruitless; perilous, too,Since he avowed that any fruit they boreWould fall, in distant years, to alien hands.
Little by little, Walchendorp withdrewHis rents from Tycho Brahe, accusing himOf gross neglects. The Chapel at RoskildeWas falling into ruin. Tycho BraheWas Keeper of the Bones of Oldenburg.He must rebuild the Chapel. All the giftsThat Frederick gave to help him in his task,Were turned to stumbling-blocks; till, one dark day,He called his young disciples round him there,And in that mellow library of dreams,Lit by the dying sunset, poured his heartAnd mind before them, bidding them farewell.Through the wide-open windows as he spokeThey heard the sorrowful whisper of the seaEbbing and flowing around Uraniborg."An end has come," he said, "to all we planned.Uraniborg has drained her treasury dry.Your Alma Mater now must close her gatesOn you, her guests; on me; and, worst of all,On one most dear, who made this place my home.For you are young, your homes are all to win,And you would all have gone your separate waysIn a brief while; and, though I think you loveYour college of the skies, it could not meanAll that it meant to those who called it 'home.'
You that have worked with me, for one brief year,Will never quite forget Uraniborg.This room, the sunset gilding all those books,The star-charts and that old celestial globe,The long bright evenings by the winter fire,Of Tycho Brahe were fruitless; perilousThe talk that opened heaven, the songs you sung,Yes, even, I think, the tricks you played with Jeppe,Will somehow, when yourselves are growing old,Be hallowed into beauty, touched with tears,For you will wish they might be yours again.
These have been mine for five-and-twenty years,And more than these,—the work, the dreams I sharedWith you, and others here. My heart will breakTo leave them. But the appointed time has comeAs it must come to all men.You and IHave watched too many constant stars to dreamThat heaven or earth, the destinies of menOr nations, are the sport of chance. An endComes to us all through blindness, age, or death.If mine must come in exile, it stall find meBearing the torch as far as I can bear it,Until I fall at the feet of the young runner,Who takes it from me, and carries it out of sight,Into the great new age I shall not know,Into the great new realms I must not tread.Come, then, swift-footed, let me see you standWaiting before me, crowned with youth and joy,At the next turning. Take it from my hand,For I am almost ready now to fall.
Something I have achieved, yes, though I say it,I have not loitered on that fiery way.And if I front the judgment of the wiseIn centuries to come, with more of dreadThan my destroyers, it is because this workWill be of use, remembered and appraised,When all their hate is dead.I say the work,Not the blind rumour, the glory or fame of it.These observations of seven hundred starsAre little enough in sight of those great hostsWhich nightly wheel around us, though I hope,Yes, I still hope, in some more generous landTo make my thousand up before I die.Little enough, I know,—a midget's work!The men that follow me, with more delicate artMay add their tens of thousands; yet my sumWill save them just that five-and-twenty yearsOf patience, bring them sooner to their goal,That kingdom of the law I shall not see.We are on the verge of great discoveries.I feel them as a dreamer feels the dawnBefore his eyes are opened. Many of youWill see them. In that day you will recallThis, our last meeting at Uraniborg,And how I told you that this work of oursWould 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 joyOf 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 footOf those high cliffs, under the drifted leaves.That's where we hide at last, we pioneers,For we are very proud, and must be soughtBefore the world can find us, in our graves.There have been compensations. I have seenIn darkness, more perhaps than eyes can seeWhen 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 findThis earth of ours is not the sovran lordOf all those wheeling spheres. Ourselves have markedMovements among the planets that forbidAcceptance of it wholly. Some of theseAre moving round the sun, if we can trustOur years of watching. There are stranger dreams.This radical, Copernicus, the priest,Of whom I often talked with you, declaresAil of these movements can be reconciled,If—a hypothesis only—we should takeThe sun itself for centre, and assumeThat this huge earth, so 'stablished, so secureIn 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 truthIn some things. But the planets we have watchedStill wander from the course that he assigned.Therefore, my system, which includes the bestOf 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 bigTo move,' so let it be the centre still,And let the planets move around their sun;But let the sun with all its planets moveAround our central earth.This at the leastAccords with all we know, and saves mankindFrom that enormous plunge into the night;Saves them from voyaging for ten thousand yearsThrough boundless darkness without sight of land;Saves them from all that agony of loss,As one by one the beacon-fires of faithAre drowned in blackness.I beseech you, then,Let me be proven wrong, before you takeThat darkness lightly. If at last you findThe proven facts against me, take the plunge.Launch out into that darkness. Let the lampsOf heaven, the glowing hearth-fires that we knewDie out behind you, while the freshening windBlows on your brows, and overhead you seeThe stars of truth that lead you from your home.
I love this island,—every little glen,Hazel-wood, brook, and fish-pond; every boughAnd blossom in that garden; and I hopedTo die here. But it is not chance, I know,That sends me wandering through the world again.My use perhaps is ended; and the powerThat made me, breaks me."As he spoke, they sawThe tears upon his face. He bowed his headAnd left them silent in the darkened room.They saw his face no more.The self-same hour,Tycho, Christine, and all their children, leftTheir island-home for even In their shipThey took a few of the smaller instruments,And that most precious record of the stars,His legacy to the future. Into the nightThey vanished, leaving on the ghostly cliffsOnly one dark, distorted, dog-like shapeTo watch them, sobbing, under its matted hair,"Master, have you forgotten Jeppe, your dwarf?"
He was a great magician, Tycho Brahe,And yet his magic, under changing skies,Could never change his heart, or touch the hillsOf those far countries with the tints of home.And, after many a month of wandering,He came to Prague; and, though with open handsRodolphe received him, like an exiled king,A new Aeneas, exiled for the truth(For so they called him), none could heal the woundsThat bled within, or lull his grief to sleepWith 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 reachedThe 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 fallBefore I yield it to the appointed soul."And yet the Power that made and broke him heard:For, on a certain day, to Tycho cameAnother exile, guided through the darkOf Europe by the starlight in his eyes,Or that invisible hand which guides the world.He asked him, as the runner with the torchAlone could ask, asked as a natural rightFor Tycho's hard-won life-work, those results,His tables of the stars. He gave his nameAlmost as one who told him,It is I;And yet unconscious that he told; a nameNot famous yet, though truth had marked him outAlready, by his exile, as her own,—The name of Johann Kepler."It was strange,"Wrote Kepler, not long after, "for I askedUnheard-of things, and yet he gave them to meAs if I were his son. When first I saw him,We seemed to have known each other years agoIn some forgotten world. I could not guessThat Tycho Brahe was dying. He was quickOf temper, and we quarrelled now and then,Only to find ourselves more closely boundThan ever. I believe that Tycho diedSimply of heartache for his native land.For though he always met me with a smile,Or jest upon his lips, he could not sleepOr work, and often unawares I caughtOdd little whispered phrases on his lipsAs if he talked to himself, in a kind of dream.Yet I believe the clouds dispersed a littleAround his death-bed, and with that strange joyWhich 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.An hour before he died, he smiled at me,And whispered,—what he meant I hardly know—Perhaps a broken echo from the past,A fragment of some old familiar thought,And yet I seemed to know. It haunts me still:'Come then, swift-footed, let me see you stand,Waiting before me, crowned with youth and joy;This is the turning. Take it from my hand.For I am ready, ready now, to fall.'"
John Kepler, from the chimney corner, watchedHis wife Susannah, with her sleeves rolled backMaking a salad in a big blue bowl.The thick tufts of his black rebellious hairBrushed into sleek submission; his trim beardSnug as the soft round body of a thrushBetween the white wings of his fan-shaped ruff(His best, with the fine lace border) spoke of guestsExpected; and his quick grey humorous eyes,His firm red whimsical pleasure-loving mouth,And all those elvish twinklings of his face,Were lit with eagerness. Only between his brows,Perplexed beneath that subtle load of dreams,Two delicate shadows brooded."What does it mean?Sir Henry Wotton's letter breathed a hintThat Italy is prohibiting my book,"He muttered. "Then, if Austria damns it too,Susannah mine, we may be forced to chooseBetween the truth and exile. When he comes,He'll tell me more. Ambassadors, I suppose,Can only write in cipher, while our worldIs steered to heaven by murderers and thieves;But, if he'd wrapped his friendly warnings upIn a verse or two, I might have done more workThese last three days, eh, Sue?""Look, John," said she,"What beautiful hearts of lettuce! Tell me nowHow shall I mix it? Will your English guestTurn up his nose at dandelion leavesAs crisp and young as these? They've just the tangOf bitterness in their milk that gives a relishAnd makes all sweet; and that's philosophy, John.Now—these spring onions! Would his ExcellencyLike sugared rose-leaves better?""He's a poet,Not an ambassador only, so I thinkHe'll like a cottage salad.""A poet, John!I hate their arrogant little insect ways!I'll put a toadstool in.""Poets, dear heart,Can be divided into two clear kinds,—One that, by virtue of a half-grown brain,Lives in a silly world of his own making,A bubble, blown by himself, in which he flitsAnd dizzily bombinates, chanting 'I, I, I,'For there is nothing in the heavens aboveOr the earth, or hell beneath, but goes to swellHis personal pronoun. Bring him some dreadful newsHis dearest friend is burned to death,—You'll seeThe monstrous insect strike an attitudeAnd shape himself into one capital I,A rubric, with red eyes. You'll see him useThe coffin for his pedestal, hear him mouthHis 'I, I, I' instructing haggard griefConcerning his odd ego. Does he chirpOf love, it's 'I, I, I' Narcissus, love,Myself, Narcissus, imaged in those eyes;For all the love-notes that he sounds are madeAfter the fashion of passionate grasshoppers,By grating one hind-leg across another.Nor does he learn to sound that mellower 'You,'Until his bubble bursts and leaves him drowned,An insect in a soap-sud.But there's another kind, whose mind still movesIn vital concord with the soul of things;So that it thinks in music, and its thoughtsPulse into natural song. A separate voice,And yet caught up by the surrounding choirs,There, in the harmonies of the Universe,Losing himself, he saves his soul alive.""John, I'm afraid!"—"Afraid of what, Susannah?"—"Afraid to put those Ducklings on to roast.Your friend may miss his road; and, if he's late,My little part of the music will be spoiled."—"He won't, Susannah. Bad poets are always late.Good poets, at times, delay a note or two;But all the great are punctual as the sun.What's that? He's early! That's his knock, I think!"—"The Lord have mercy, John, there's nothing ready!Take him into your study and talk to him,Talk hard. He's come an hour before his time;And I've to change my dress. I'll into the kitchen!"
Then, in a moment, all the cottage rangWith greetings; hand grasped hand; his ExcellencyForgot the careful prologue he'd prepared,And made an end of mystery. He had broughtA message from his wisdom-loving kingWho, hearing of new menaces to the lightIn Europe, urged the illustrious Kepler nowTo make his home in England. There, his thoughtAnd speech would both be free."My friend," said Wotton,"I have moved in those old strongholds of the night,And heard strange mutterings. It is not many yearsSince Bruno burned. There's trouble brewing too,For one you know, I think,—the FlorentineWho made that curious optic tube."—"You meanThe man at Padua, Galileo?"—"Yes.""They will not dare or need. Proof or disproofRests with their eyes."—"Kepler, have you not heardOf those who, fifteen hundred years ago,Had eyes and would not see? Eyes quickly closeWhen souls prefer the dark."—"So be it. Other and younger eyes will see.Perhaps that's why God gave the young a spiceOf devilry. They'll go look, while elders gasp;And, when the Devil and Truth go hand in hand,God help their enemies. You will send my thanks,My grateful thanks, Sir Henry, to your king.To-day I cannot answer you. I must think.It would be very difficult My wifeWould find it hard to leave her native land.Say nothing yet before her."Then, to hideTheir secret from Susannah, Kepler pouredHis mind out, and the world's dead branches bloomed.For, when he talked, another spring beganTo which our May was winter; and, in the boughsOf his delicious thoughts, like feathered choirs,Bits of old rhyme, scraps from the Sabine farm,Celestial phrases from the Shepherd King,And fluttering morsels from Catullus sang.Much was fantastic. All was touched with lightThat only genius knows to steal from heaven.He spoke of poetry, as the "flowering timeOf knowledge," called it "thought in passionate tuneWith those great rhythms that steer the moon and sun;Thought in such concord with the soul of thingsThat it can only move, like tides and stars,And man's own beating heart, and the wings of birds,In law, whose service only sets them free."Therefore it often leaps to the truth we seek,Clasping it, as a lover clasps his brideIn darkness, ere the sage can light his lamp.And so, in music, men might find the roadTo truth, at many a point, where sages grope.One day, a greater Plato would ariseTo write a new philosophy, he said,Showing how music is the golden clueTo all the windings of the world's dark maze.Himself had used it, partly proved it, too,In his own book,—the Harmonies of the World.'All that the years discover points one wayTo this great ordered harmony," he said,"Revealed on earth by music. Planets moveIn subtle accord like notes of one great songAudible only to the Artificer,The Eternal Artist. There's no grief, no pain,But music—follow it simply as a clue,A microcosmic pattern of the whole—Can show you, somewhere in its golden scheme,The use of all such discords; and, at last,Their exquisite solution. Then darkness breaksInto diviner light, love's agony climbsThrough death to life, and evil builds up heaven.Have you not heard, in some great symphony,Those golden mathematics making clearThe victory of the soul? Have you not heardThe very heavens opening?Do those foolsWho thought me an infidel then, still smile at meFor trying to read the stars in terms of song,Discern their orbits, measure their distances,By musical proportions? Let them smile,My folly at least revealed those three great laws;Gave me the golden vases of the Egyptians,To set in the great new temple of my GodBeyond the bounds of Egypt.They will forgetMy methods, doubtless, as the years go by,And the world's wisdom shuts its music out.The dust will gather on all my harmonies;Or scholars turn my pages listlessly,Glance at the musical phrases, and pass on,Not troubling even to read one Latin page.Yet they'll accept those great results as mine.I call them mine. How can I help exulting,Who climbed my ladder of music to the skiesAnd found, by accident, let them call it so,Or by the inspiration of that PowerWhich built His world of music, those three laws:—First, how the speed of planets round the sunBears a proportion, beautifully preciseAs music, to their silver distances;Next, that although they seem to swerve asideFrom those plain circles of old CopernicusTheir paths were not less rhythmical and exact,But followed always that most exquisite curveIn its most perfect form, the pure ellipse;Third, that although their speed from point to pointAppeared to change, their radii always movedThrough equal fields of space in equal times.Was this my infidelity, was thisLess full of beauty, less divine in truth,Than their dull chaos? You, the poet will knowHow, as those dark perplexities grew clear,And old anomalous discords changed to song,My whole soul bowed and cried,Almighty GodThese are Thy thoughts, I am thinking after Thee!I hope that Tycho knows. I owed so muchTo Tycho Brahe; for it was he who builtThe towers from which I hailed those three great laws.How strange and far away it all seems now.The thistles grow upon that little isleWhere Tycho's great Uraniborg once was.Yet, for a few sad years, before it fellInto decay and ruin, there was oneWho crept about its crumbling corridors,And lit the fire of memory on its hearth."—Wotton looked quickly up, "I think I have heardSomething of that. You mean poor Jeppe, his dwarf.Fynes Moryson, at the Mermaid Inn one nightShowed a most curious manuscript, a scrawlOn yellow parchment, crusted here and thereWith sea-salt, or the salt of those thick tearsCreatures like Jeppe, the crooked dwarf, could weep.It had been found, clasped in a crooked hand,Under the cliffs of Wheen, a crooked handThat many a time had beckoned to passing ships,Hoping to find some voyager who would takeA letter to its master.The sailors laughedAnd jeered at him, till Jeppe threw stones at them.And now Jeppe, too, was dead, and one who knewFynes Moryson, had found him, and brought homeThat curious crooked scrawl. Fynes Englished itOut of its barbarous Danish. Thus it ran:'Master, have you forgotten Jeppe, your dwarf,Who used to lie beside the big log-fireAnd feed from your own hand? The hall is dark,There are no voices now,—only the windAnd the sea-gulls crying round Uraniborg.I too am crying, Master, even I,Because there is no fire upon the hearth,No light in any window. It is night,And all the faces that I knew are gone.
Master, I watched you leaving us. I sawThe white sails dwindling into sea-gull's wings,Then melting into foam, and all was dark.I lay among the wild flowers on the cliffAnd dug my nails into the stiff white chalkAnd called you, Tycho Brahe. You did not hear;But gulls and jackdaws, wheeling round my head,Mocked me withTycho Brahe, andTycho Brahe!
You were a great magician, Tycho Brahe;And, now that they have driven you away,I, that am only Jeppe,—the crooked dwarf,You used to laugh at for his matted hair,And head too big and heavy—take your penHere in your study. I will write it downAnd send it by a sailor to the KingOf Scotland, and who knows, the mouse that gnawedThe lion free, may save you, Tycho Brahe.'""He is free now," said Kepler, "had he livedHe would have sent for Jeppe to join him thereAt Prague. But death forestalled him, and your King.The years in which he watched that planet Mars,His patient notes and records, all were mine;And, mark you, had he clipped or trimmed one factBy even a hair's-breadth, so that his resultsMade a pure circle of that planet's pathIt might have baffled us for an age and drownedAll our new light in darkness. But he heldTo what he saw. He might so easily,So comfortably have said, 'My instrumentsAre crude and fallible. In so fine a pointEyes may have erred, too. Why not acquiesce?Why mar the tune, why dislocate a world,For one slight clash of seeming fact with faith?'But no, though stars might swerve, he held his course,Recording only what his eyes could seeUntil death closed them.Then, to his results,I added mine and saw, in one wild gleam,Strange as the light of day to one born blind,A subtler concord ruling them and heardProfounder tones of harmony resolveThose broken melodies into song again."—"Faintly and far away, I, too, have seenIn music, and in verse, that golden clueWhereof you speak," said Wotton. "In all true song,There is a hidden logic. Even the rhymeThat, in bad poets, wrings the neck of thought,Is like a subtle calculus to the true,An instrument of discovery. It revealsNew harmonies, new analogies. It linksFar things and near, not in unnatural chains,But in those true accords which still escapeThe plodding reason, yet unify the world.I caught some glimpses of this mystic powerIn verses of your own, that elegyOn Tycho, and that great quatrain of yours—I cannot quite recall the Latin words,But made it roughly mine in words like these:
'I know that I am dust, and daily die;Yet, as I trace those rhythmic spheres at night,I stand before the Thunderer's throne on highAnd feast on nectar in the halls of light.'
My version lacks the glory of your linesBut…""Mine too was a version,"Kepler laughed,"Turned into Latin from old Ptolemy's Greek;For, even in verse, half of the joy, I think,Is just to pass the torch from hand to handAn undimmed splendour. But, last night, I triedSome music all my own. I had a dreamThat I was wandering in some distant world.I have often dreamed it Once it was the moon.I wrote that down in prose. When I am dead,It may be printed. This was a fairer dream:For I was walking in a far-off springUpon the planet, Venus. Only verseCould spread true wings for that delicious world;And so I wrote it—for no eyes but mine,Or 'twould be seized on, doubtless, as fresh proofOf poor old Kepler's madness."—"Let me hear,Madman to madman; for I, too, write verse."Then Kepler, in a rhythmic murmur, breathedHis rich enchanted memories of that dream:
"Beauty burned before meSwinging a lanthorn through that fragrant night.I followed a distant singing,And a dreaming lightHow she led me, I cannot tellTo that strange world afar,Nor how I walked, in that wild glenUpon the sunset star.
Winged creatures floatedUnder those rose-red boughs of violet bloom,With delicate forms unknown on Earth'Twixt irised plume and plume;Human-hearted, angel-eyed,And crowned with unknown flowers;For nothing in that enchanted worldFollowed the way of ours.
Only I saw that Beauty,On Hesper, as on earth, still held command;And though, as one in slumber,I roamed that radiant land,With all these earth-born senses sealedTo what the Hesperians knew,The faithful lanthorn of her lawWas mine on Hesper too.
Then, half at home with wonder,I saw strange flocks of flowers like birds take flight;Great trees that burned like opalsTo lure their loves at night;Dark beings that could move in realmsNo dream of ours has known.Till these became as common thingsAs men account their own.
Yet, when that lanthorn led meBack to the world where once I thought me wise;I saw, on this my planet,What souls, with awful eyes.Hardly I dared to walk her fieldsAs in that strange re-birthI looked on those wild miraclesThe birds and flowers of earth."
Silence a moment held them, loth to breakThe spell of that strange dream,"One proof the more"Said Wotton at last, "that songs can mount and flyTo truth; for this fantastic vision of yoursOf life in other spheres, awakes in me,Either that slumbering knowledge of Socrates,Or some strange premonition that the yearsWill prove it true. This music leads us farFrom all our creeds, except that faith in law.Your quest for knowledge—how it rests on that!How sure the soul is that if truth destroyThe temple, in three days the truth will buildA nobler temple; and that order reignsIn all things. Even your atheist builds his doubtOn that strange faith; destroys his heaven and GodIn absolute faith that his own thought is trueTo law, God's lanthorn to our stumbling feet;And so, despite himself, he worships God,For where true souls are, there are God and heaven."—
"It is an ancient wisdom. Long ago,"Said Kepler, "under the glittering Eastern sky,The shepherd king looked up at those great stars,Those ordered hosts, and criedCaeli narrantGloriam Dei!Though there be some to-dayWho'd ape Lucretius, and believe themselvesEpicureans, little they know of himWho, even in utter darkness, bowed his head,To something nobler than the gods of RomeReigning beyond the darkness.They acceptThe law, the music of these ordered worlds;And straight deny the law's first postulate,That out of nothingness nothing can be born,Nor greater things from less. Can music riseBy chance from chaos, as they said that starIn Serpentarius rose? I told them, then,That when I was a boy, with time to spare,I played at anagrams. Out of my Latin nameJohannes Kepleruscame that sinister phraseSerpens in akuleo. Struck by this,I tried again, but trusted it to chance.I took some playing cards, and wrote on eachOne letter of my name. Then I beganTo shuffle them; and, at every shuffle, I readThe letters, in their order, as they came,To see what meaning chance might give to them.Wotton, the gods and goddesses must have laughedTo see the weeks I lost in studying chance;For had I scattered those cards into the blackEpicurean eternity, I'll swearThey'd still be playing at leap-frog in the dark,And show no glimmer of sense. And yet—to hearThose wittols talk, you'd think you'd but to mixA bushel of good Greek letters in a sackAnd shake them roundly for an age or so,To pour the Odyssey out.At last, I told,Those disputants what my wife had said. One nightWhen I was tired and all my mind a-dustWith pondering on their atoms, I was calledTo supper, and she placed before me thereA most delicious salad. 'It would appear,'I thought aloud, 'that if these pewter dishes,Green hearts of lettuce, tarragon, slips of thyme,Slices of hard boiled egg, and grains of salt.With drops of water, vinegar and oil,Had in a bottomless gulf been flying aboutFrom all eternity, one sure certain dayThe sweet invisible hand of Happy ChanceWould serve them as a salad.''Likely enough,'My wife replied, 'but not so good as mine,Nor so well dressed.'"They laughed. Susannah's voiceBroke in, "I've made a better one. The receiptCame from theGolden Lion. I have dishedDucklings and peas and all. Come, John, say grace."
(Celeste, in the Convent at Arcetri, writes to her old lover at Rome.)
My friend, my dearest friend, my own dear love,I, who am dead to love, and see around meThe funeral tapers lighted, send this cryOut of my heart to yours, before the end.You told me once you would endure the rackTo save my heart one pang. O, save it now!Last night there came a dreadful word from RomeFor my dear lord and father, summoning himBefore the inquisitors there, to take his trialAt threescore years and ten. There is a threatOf torture, if his lips will not denyThe truth his eyes have seen.You know my father,You know me, too. You never will believeThat he and I are enemies of the faith.Could I, who put away all earthly love,Deny the Cross to which I nailed this flesh?Could he, who, on the night when all those heavensOpened above us, with their circling worlds,Knelt with me, crushed beneath that weight of glory,Forget the Maker of that glory now?You'll not believe it. Neither would the Church,Had not his enemies poisoned all the springsAnd fountain-heads of truth. It is not RomeThat summons him, but Magini, Sizy, Scheiner,Lorini, all the blind, pedantic crewThat envy him his fame, and hate his worksFor dwarfing theirs.Must such things always beWhen truth is born?Only five nights ago we walked together,My father and I, here in the Convent garden;And, as the dusk turned everything to dreams,We dreamed together of his work well doneAnd happiness to be. We did not dreamThat even then, muttering above his book,His enemies, those enemies whom the truthStings into hate, were plotting to destroy him.Yet something shadowed him. I recall his words—"The grapes are ripening. See, Celeste, how blackAnd heavy. We shall have good wine this year,"—"Yes, all grows ripe," I said, "your life-work, too,Dear father. Are you happy now to knowYour book is printed, and the new world born?"He shook his head, a little sadly, I thought."Autumn's too full of endings. Fruits grow ripeAnd fall, and then comes winter.""Not for you!Never," I said, "for those who write their namesIn heaven. Think, father, through all ages nowNo one can ever watch that starry skyWithout remembering you. Your fame …"And thereHe stopped me, laid his hand upon my arm,And standing in the darkness with dead leavesDrifting around him, and his bare grey headBowed in complete humility, his voiceShaken and low, he said like one in prayer,"Celeste, beware of that. Say truth, not fame.If there be any happiness on earth,It springs from truth alone, the truth we liveIn act and thought. I have looked up there and seenToo many worlds to talk of fame on earth.Fame, on this grain of dust among the stars,The trumpet of a gnat that thinks to haltThe great sun-clusters moving on their wayIn silence! Yes, that's fame, but truth, Celeste,Truth and its laws are constant, even up there;That's where one man may face and fight the world.His weakness turns to strength. He is made oneWith universal forces, and he holdsThe password to eternity.Gate after gate swings back through all the heavens.No sentry halts him, and no flaming sword.Say truth, Celeste, not fame.""No, for I'll sayA better word," I told him. "I'll say love."He took my face between his hands and said—His face all dark between me and the stars—"What's love, Celeste, but this dear face of truthUpturned to heaven."He left me, and I heard,Some twelve hours later, that this man whose soulWas dedicate to Truth, was threatened nowWith torture, if his lips did not denyThe truth he loved.I tell you all these thingsBecause to help him, you must understand him;And even you may doubt him, if you hearOnly those plausible outside witnessesWho never heard his heart-beats as have I.So let me tell you all—his quest for truth,And how this hate began.Even from the first,He made his enemies of those almost-mindsWho chanced upon some new thing in the darkAnd could not see its meaning, for he saw,Always, the law illumining it within.So when he heard of that strange optic-glassWhich brought the distance near, he thought it outBy reason, where that other hit upon itOnly by chance. He made his telescope;And O, how vividly that day comes back,When in their gorgeous robes the Senate stoodBeside him on that high Venetian tower,Scanning the bare blue sea that showed no speckOf sail. Then, one by one, he bade them look;And one by one they gasped, "a miracle."Brown sails and red, a fleet of fishing boats,See how the bright foam bursts around their bows!See how the bare-legged sailors walk the decks!Then, quickly looking up, as if to catchThe vision, ere it tricked them, all they sawWas empty sea again.Many believedThat all was trickery, but he bade them noteThe colours of the boats, and count their sails.Then, in a little while, the naked eyeSaw on the sky-line certain specks that grew,Took form and colour; and, within an hour,Their magic fleet came foaming into port.Whereat old senators, wagging their white beards,And plucking at golden chains with stiff old clawsToo feeble for the sword-hilt, squeaked at once:"This glass will give us great advantagesIn time of war."War, war, O God of love,Even amidst their wonder at Thy world,Dazed with new beauty, gifted with new powers,These old men dreamed of blood. This was the thoughtTo which all else must pander, if he hopedEven for one hour to see those dull eyes blazeAt his discoveries."Wolves," he called them, "wolves";And yet he humoured them. He stooped to them.Promised them more advantages, and talkedAs elders do to children. You may call itWeakness, and yet could any man do more,Alone, against a world, with such a trustTo guard for future ages? All his lifeHe has had some weanling truth to guard, has foughtDesperately to defend it, taking coverWherever he could, behind old fallen treesOf superstition, or ruins of old thought.He has read horoscopes to keep his workAmong the stars in favour with his prince,I tell you this that you may understandWhat seems inconstant in him. It may beThat he was wrong in these things, and must payA dreadful penalty. But you must exploreHis mind's great ranges, plains and lonely peaksBefore you know him, as I know him now.How could he talk to children, but in wordsThat children understand? Have not some saidThat God Himself has made His glory darkFor men to bear it. In his human sphereMy father has done this.War was the dreamThat filmed those old men's eyes. They did not hearMy father, when he hinted at his hopeOf opening up the heavens for mankindWith that new power of bringing far things near.My heart burned as I heard him; but they blinkedLike owls at noonday. Then I saw him turn,Desperately, to humour them, from thoughtsOf heaven to thoughts of warfare.Late that nightMy own dear lord and father came to meAnd whispered, with a glory in his faceAs one who has looked on things too beautifulTo breathe aloud, "Come out, Celeste, and seeA miracle."I followed him. He showed me,Looking along his outstretched hand, a star,A point of light above our olive-trees.It was the star called Jupiter. And thenHe bade me look again, but through his glass.I feared to look at first, lest I should seeSome wonder never meant for mortal eyes.He too, had felt the same, not fear, but awe,As if his hand were laid upon the veilBetween this world and heaven.Then . . . I, too, saw,Small as the smallest bead of mist that clingsTo a spider's thread at dawn, the floating diskOf what had been a star, a planet now,And near it, with no disk that eyes could see,Four needle-points of light, unseen before."The moons of Jupiter," he whispered low,"I have watched them as they moved, from night to night;A system like our own, although the worldTheir fourfold lights and shadows make so strangeMust—as I think—be mightier than we dreamed,A Titan planet. Earth begins to fadeAnd dwindle; yes, the heavens are opening now.Perhaps up there, this night, some lonely soulGazes at earth, watches our dawning moon,And wonders, as we wonder."In that darkWe knelt together . . .Very strange to seeThe vanity and fickleness of princes.Before his enemies had provoked the wrathOf Rome against him, he had given the nameOf Medicean stars to those four moonsIn honour of Prince Cosmo. This arousedThe court of France to seek a lasting placeUpon the map of heaven. A letter cameBeseeching him to find another starEven more brilliant, and to call itHenriAfter the reigning and most brilliant princeOf France. They did not wish the family nameOf Bourbon. This would dissipate the glory.No, they preferred his proper name of Henri.We read it together in the garden here,Weeping with laughter, never dreaming thenThat this, this, this, could stir the little heartsOf men to envy.O, but afterwards,The blindness of the men who thought themselvesHis enemies. The men who never knew him,The men that had set up a thing of strawAnd called it by his name, and wished to burnTheir image and himself in one wild fire.Men? Were they men or children? They refusedEven to look through Galileo's glass,Lest seeing might persuade them. Even that sage,That great Aristotelian, Julius Libri,Holding his breath there, like a fractious childUntil his cheeks grew purple, and the veinsWere bursting on his brow, swore he would dieSooner than look.And that poor monstrous babeNot long thereafter, kept his word and died,Died of his own pent rage, as I have heard.Whereat my lord and father shook his headAnd, smiling, somewhat sadly—oh, you knowThat smile of his, more deadly to the falseThan even his reasoning—murmured,"Libri, dead,Who called the moons of Jupiter absurd!He swore he would not look at them from earth,I hope he saw them on his way to heaven."Welser in Augsburg, Clavius at Rome,Scoffed at the fabled moons of Jupiter,It was a trick, they said. He had made a glassTo fool the world with false appearances.Perhaps the lens was flawed. Perhaps his witsWere wandering. Anything rather than the truthWhich might disturb the mighty in their seat."Let Galileo hold his own opinions.I, Clavius, will hold mine."He wrote to Kepler;"You, Kepler, are the first, whose open mindAnd lofty genius could accept for truthThe things which I have seen. With you for friend,The abuse of the multitude will not trouble me.Jupiter stands in heaven and will stand,Though all the sycophants bark at him.In Pisa,Florence, Bologna, Venice, Padua,Many have seen the moons. These witnessesAre silent and uncertain. Do you wonder?Most of them could not, even when they saw them,Distinguish Mars from Jupiter. Shall we sideWith Heraclitus or Democritus?I think, my Kepler, we will only laughAt this immeasurable stupidity.Picture the leaders of our college here.A thousand times I have offered them the proofOf their own eyes. They sleep here, like gorged snakes,Refusing even to look at planets, moons,Or telescope. They think philosophyIs all in books, and that the truth is foundNeither in nature, nor the Universe,But in comparing texts. How you would laughHad you but heard our first philosopherBefore the Grand Duke, trying to tear downAnd argue the new planets out of heaven,Now by his own weird logic and closed eyesAnd now by magic spells."How could he helpDespising them a little? It's an errorEven for a giant to despise a midge;For, when the giant reels beneath some strokeOf fate, the buzzing clouds will swoop upon him,Cluster and feed upon his bleeding wounds,And do what midges can to sting him blind.These human midges have not missed their chance.They have missed no smallest spot upon that sun.My mother was not married—they have found—To my dear father. All his children, then,And doubtless all their thoughts are evil, too;But who that judged him ever sought to knowWhether, as evil sometimes wears the cloakOf virtue, nobler virtue in this manMight wear that outward semblance of a sin?Yes, even you who love me, may believeThese thoughts are born of my own tainted heart;And yet I write them, kneeling in my cellAnd whisper them to One who blesses meHere, from His Cross, upon the bare grey wall.So, if you love me, bless me also, you,By helping him. Make plain to all you meetWhat part his enemies have played in this.How some one, somehow, altered the commandLaid on him all those years ago, by Rome,So that it reads to-day as if he vowedNever to think or breathe that this round earthMoves with its sister-planets round the sun.'Tis true he promised not to write or speakAs if this truth were 'stablished equallyWith God's eternal laws; and so he wroteHis Dialogues, reasoning for it, and against,And gave the last word to Simplicio,Saying that human reason must bow downBefore the power of God.And even thisHis enemies have twisted to a sneerAgainst the Pope, and cunningly declaredSimplicio to be Urban.Why, my friend,There were three dolphins on the titlepage,Each with the tail of another in its mouth.The censor had not seen this, and they sworeIt held some hidden meaning. Then they foundThe same three dolphins sprawled on all the booksLandini printed at his Florence press.They tried another charge.I am not afraidOf any truth that they can bring against him;But, O, my friend, I more than fear their lies.I do not fear the justice of our God;But I do fear the vanity of men;Even of Urban; not His Holiness,But Urban, the weak man, who may resent,And in resentment rush half-way to meetThis cunning lie with credence. Vanity!O, half the wrongs on earth arise from that!Greed, and war's pomp, all envy, and most hate,Are born of that; while one dear humble heart,Beating with love for man, between two thieves,Proves more than all His wounds and miraclesOur Crucified to be the Son of God.Say that I long to see him; that my prayersKnock at the gates of mercy, night and day.Urge him to leave the judgment now with GodAnd strive no more.If he be right, the starsFight for him in their courses. Let him bowHis poor, dishonoured, glorious, old grey headBefore this storm, and then come home to me.O, quickly, or I fear 'twill be too late;For I am dying. Do not tell him this;But I must live to hold his hands again,And know that he is safe.I dare not leave him, helpless and half blind,Half father and half child, to rack and cord.By all the Christ within you, save him, you;And, though you may have ceased to love me now,One faithful shadow in your own last hourShall watch beside you till all shadows die,And heaven unfold to bless you where I failed.
(Scheiner writes to Castelli, after the Trial.)
What think you of your Galileo now,Your hero that like Ajax should defyThe lightning? Yesterday I saw him standTrembling before our court of Cardinals,Trembling before the colour of their robesAs sheep, before the slaughter, at the sightAnd smell of blood. His lips could hardly speak,And—mark you—neither rack, nor cord had touched him.Out of the Inquisition's five degreesOf rigor: first, the public threat of torture;Second, the repetition of the threatWithin the torture-chamber, where we showThe instruments of torture to the accused;Third, the undressing and the binding; fourth,Laying him on the rack; then, fifth and last,Torture,territio realis; out of these,Your Galileo reached the second only,When, clapping both his hands against his sides,He whined about a rupture that forbadeThese extreme courses. Great heroic soulDropped like a cur into a sea of terror,He sank right under. Then he came up gasping,Ready to swear, deny, abjure, recant,Anything, everything! Foolish, weak, old man,Who had been so proud of his discoveries,And dared to teach his betters. How we grinnedTo see him kneeling there and whispering, thus,Through his white lips, bending his old grey head:"I, Galileo Galilei, bornA Florentine, now seventy years of age,Kneeling before you, having before mine eyes,And touching with my hands the Holy Gospels,Swear that I always have believed, do now,And always will believe what Holy ChurchHas held and preached and taught me to believe;And now, whereas I rightly am accused,Of heresy, having falsely held the sunTo be the centre of our Universe,And also that this earth is not the centre,But moves;I most illogically desireCompletely to expunge this dark suspicion,So reasonably conceived. I now abjure,Detest and curse these errors; and I swearThat should I know another, friend or foe,Holding the selfsame heresy as myself,I will denounce him to the InquisitorIn whatsoever place I chance to be.So help me God, and these His Holy Gospels,Which with my hands I touch!"You will observeHis promise to denounce. Beware, Castelli!What think you of your Galileo now?
(Castelli writes, enclosing Schemer's letter, to Campanella.)
What think I? This,—that he has laid his handsLike Samson on the pillars of our world,And one more trembling utterance such as thisWill overwhelm us all.O, Campanella,You know that I am loyal to our faith,As Galileo too has always been.You know that I believe, as he believes,In the one Catholic Apostolic Church;Yet there are many times when I could wishThat some blind Samson would indeed tear downAll this proud temporal fabric, made with hands,And that, once more, we suffered with our Lord,Were persecuted, crucified with Him.I tell you, Campanella, on that dayWhen Galileo faced our Cardinals,A veil was rent for me. There, in one flash,I saw the eternal tragedy, transformedInto new terms. I saw the Christ once more,Before the court of Pilate. Peter thereDenied Him once again; and, as for me,Never has all my soul so humbly kneltTo God in Christ, as when that sad old manBowed his grey head, and knelt—at seventy years—To acquiesce, and shake the world with shame.He shall not strive or cry! Strange, is it not,How nearly Scheiner—even amidst his hate—Quoted the Prophets? Do we think this worldSo greatly bettered, that the ancient cry,"Despised, rejected," hails our God no more?
(Celeste writes to her father in his imprisonment at Siena.)
Dear father, it will seem a thousand yearsUntil I see you home again and well.I would not have you doubt that all this timeI have prayed for you continually. I sawA copy of your sentence. I was grieved;And yet it gladdened me, for I found a wayTo be of use, by taking on myselfYour penance. Therefore, if you fail in this,If you forget it—and indeed, to save youThe trouble of remembering it—your childWill do it for you.Ah, could she do more!How willingly would your Celeste endureA straiter prison than she lives in nowTo set you free."A prison," I have said;And yet, if you were here, 'twould not be so.When you were pent in Rome, I used to say,"Would he were at Siena!" God fulfilledThat wish. You are at Siena; and I now sayWould he were at Arcctri.So perhapsLittle by little, angels can be wooedEach day, by some new prayer of mine or yours,To bring you wholly back to me, and saveSome few of the flying days that yet remain.You see, these other Nuns have each their friend,Their patron Saint, their ever neardevoto,To whom they tell their joys and griefs; but IHave only you, dear father, and if youWere only near me, I could want no more.Your garden looks as if it missed your love.The unpruned branches lean against the wallTo look for you. The walks run wild with flowers.Even your watch-tower seems to wait for you;And, though the fruit is not so good this year(The vines were hurt by hail, I think, and thievesHave climbed the wall too often for the pears),The crop of peas is good, and only waitsYour hand to gather it.In the dovecote, too,You'll find some plump young pigeons. We must makeA feast for your return.In my small plot,Here at the Convent, better watched than yours,I raised a little harvest. With the priceI got for it, I had three Masses saidFor my dear father's sake.
(Galileo writes to his friend Castelli, after his return to Arcetri.)
Castelli, O Castelli, she is dead.I found her driving death back with her soulTill I should come.I could not even seeHer face.—These useless eyes had spent their powerOn distant worlds, and lost that last faint lookOf love on earth.I am in the dark, Castelli,Utterly and irreparably blind.The Universe which once these outworn eyesEnlarged so far beyond its ancient boundsIs henceforth shrunk into that narrow spaceWhich I myself inhabit.Yet I foundEven in the dark, her tears against my face,Her thin soft childish arms around my neck,And her voice whispering … love, undying love;Asking me, at this last, to tell her true,If we should meet again.Her trust in meHad shaken her faith in what my judges held;And, as I felt her fingers clutch my hand,Like a child drowning, "Tell me the truth," she said,"Before I lose the light of your dear face"—It seemed so strange that dying she could see meWhile I had lost her,—"tell me, before I go.""Believe in Love," was all my soul could breathe.I heard no answer. Only I felt her handClasp mine and hold it tighter. Then she died,And left me to my darkness. Could I guessAt unseen glories, in this deeper night,Make new discoveries of profounder realms,Within the soul? O, could I find Him there,Rise to Him through His harmonies of lawAnd make His will my own!This much, at least,I know already, that—in some strange way—His law implies His love; for, failing thatAll grows discordant, and the primal PowerIgnobler than His children.So I trustOne day to find her, waiting for me still,When all things are made new.I raise this torchOf knowledge. It is one with my right hand,And the dark sap that keeps it burning flowsOut of my heart; and yet, for all my faith,It shows me only darkness.Was I wrong?Did I forget the subtler truth of RomeAnd, in my pride, obscure the world's one light?Did I subordinate to this moving earthOur swiftlier-moving God?O, my Celeste,Once, once at least, you knew far more than I;And she is dead, Castelli, she is dead.
(Viviani, many years later, writes to a friend in England)
I was his last disciple, as you sayI went to him, at seventeen years of age,And offered him my hands and eyes to use,When, voicing the true mind and heart of Rome,Father Castelli, his most faithful friend,Wrote, for my master, that compassionate plea;The noblest eye that Nature ever madeIs darkened; one so exquisitely dowered,So delicate in power that it beheldMore than all other eyes in ages goneAnd opened the eyes of all that are to come.But, out of England, even then, there shoneThe first ethereal promise of lightThat crowns my master dead. Well I recallThat day of days. There was no faintest breathAmong his garden cypress-trees. They dreamedDark, on a sky too beautiful for tears,And the first star was trembling overhead,When, quietly as a messenger from heaven,Moving unseen, through his own purer realm,Amongst the shadows of our mortal world,A young man, with a strange light on his faceKnocked at the door of Galileo's house.His name was Milton.By the hand of God,He, the one living soul on earth with powerTo read the starry soul of this blind man,Was led through Italy to his prison door.He looked on Galileo, touched his hand …O, dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,Irrecoverably dark ….In after days,He wrote it; but it pulsed within him then;And Galileo rising to his feetAnd turning on him those unseeing eyesThat had searched heaven and seen so many worlds,Said to him, "You have found me."Often he told me in those last sad monthsOf how your grave young island poet broughtPeace to him, with the knowledge that, far off,In other lands, the truth he had proclaimedWas gathering power.Soon after, death unlockedHis prison, and the city that he loved,Florence, his town of flowers, whose gates in lifeHe was forbid to pass, received him dead.
You write to me from England, that his nameIs now among the mightiest in the world,And in his name I thank you.I am old;And I was very young when, long ago,I stood beside his poor dishonoured graveWhere hate denied him even an epitaph;And I have seen, slowly and silently,His purer fame arising, like a moonIn marble on the twilight of those aislesAt Santa Croce, where the dread decreeWas read against him.Now, against two wrongs,Let me defend two victims: first, the ChurchWhom many have vilified for my master's doom;And second, Galileo, whom they reproachBecause they think that in his blind old ageHe might with one great eagle's glance have cowedHis judges, played the hero, raised his handsAbove his head, and posturing like a mummerCried (as one empty rumour now declares)After his recantation—yet, it moves!Out of this wild confusion, fourfold wrongsAre heaped on both sides.—I would fain bring peace,The peace of truth to both before I die;And, as I hope, rest at my master's feet.It was not Rome that tried to murder truth;But the blind hate and vanity of man.Had Galileo but concealed the smileWith which, like Socrates, he answered fools,They would not, in the name of Christ, have mixedThis hemlock in his chalice.O pitifulPitiful human hearts that must denyTheir own unfolding heavens, for one light wordTwisted by whispering malice.Did he meanSimplicio, in his dialogues, for the Pope?Doubtful enough—the name was borrowed straightFrom older dialogues.If he gave one thoughtOf Urban's to Simplicio—you know wellHow composite are all characters in books,How authors find their colours here and there,And paint both saints and villains from themselves.No matter. This was Urban. Make it clear.Simplicio means a simpleton. The saintsAre aroused by ridicule to most human wrath.Urban was once his friend. This hint of oursKills all of that. And so we mortals closeThe doors of Love and Knowledge on the world.And so, for many an age, the name of ChristHas been misused by man to mask man's hate.How should the Church escape, then? I who lovedMy master, know he had no truer friendThan many of those true servants of the Church,Fathers and priests who, in their lowlier sphere,Moved nearer than her cardinals to the Christ.These were the very Rome, and held her keys.Those who charge Rome with hatred of the lightWould charge the sun with darkness, and accuseThis dome of sky for all the blood-red wrongsThat men commit beneath it. Art and songThat found her once in Europe their sole shrineAnd sanctuary absolve her from that stain.
But there's this other charge against my friend,And master, Galileo. It is broughtBy friends, made sharper by their pity and grief,The charge that he refused his martyrdomAnd so denied his own high faith.Whose faith,—His friends', his Protestant followers', or his own?Faced by the torture, that sublime old manWas still a faithful Catholic, and his thoughtPlunged deeper than his Protestant followers knew.His aim was not to strike a blow at RomeBut to confound his enemies. He believedAs humbly as Castelli or CelesteThat there is nothing absolute but that PowerWith which his Church confronted him. To thisHe bowed his head, acknowledging that his lightWas darkness; but affirming, all the more,That Ptolemy's light was even darker yet.Read your own Protestant Milton, who derivedHis mighty argument from my master's lips:"Whether the sun predominant in heavenRise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun;Leave them to God above; Him serve and fear."Just as in boyhood, when my master watchedThe swinging lamp in the cathedral thereAt Pisa; and, by one finger on his pulse,Found that, although the great bronze miracle swungThrough ever-shortening spaces, yet it movedMore slowly, and so still swung in equal times;He straight devised another boon to man,Those pulse-clocks which by many a fevered bedOur doctors use; dreamed of that timepiece, too,Whose punctual swinging pendulum on earthMeasures the starry periods, and to-dayTalks peacefully to children by the fireLike an old grandad full of ancient tales,Remembering endless ages, and foretellingEternities to come; but, all the whileThere, in the dim cathedral, he knew well,That dreaming youngster, with his tawny maneOf red-gold hair, and deep ethereal eyes,What odorous clouds of incense round him rose;Was conscious in the dimness, of great throngsKneeling around him; shared in his own heartThe music and the silence and the cry,O, salutaris hostia!—so now,There was no mortal conflict in his mindBetween his dream-clocks and things absolute,And one far voice, most absolute of all,Feeble with suffering, calling night and day"Return, return;" the voice of his Celeste.All these things co-existed, and the lessWere comprehended, like the swinging lamp,Within that great cathedral of his soul.Often he bade me, in that desolate houseIl Giojello, of old a jewel of light,Read to him one sad letter, till he knewThe most of it by heart, and while he walkedHis garden, leaning on my arm, at timesI think he quite forgot that I was there;For he would quietly murmur it to himself,As if she had sent it, half an hour ago:"Now, with this little winter's gift of fruitI send you, father, from our southward wall,Our convent's rarest flower, a Christmas rose.At this cold season, it should please you much,Seeing how rare it is; but, with the rose,You must accept its thorns, which bring to mindOur Lord's own bitter Passion. Its green leavesImage the hope that through His Passion we,After this winter of our mortal life,May find the beauty of an eternal springIn heaven."Praise me the martyr, out of whose agoniesSome great new hope is born, but not the foolWho starves his heart to prove what eyes can seeAnd intellect confirm throughout the world.Why must he follow the idiot schoolboy code,Torture his soul to reinforce the sightOf those that closed their eyes and would not see.To your own men of science, fifty turnsOf the thumbscrew would not prove that earth revolved.Call it Italian subtlety if you will,I say his intricate cause could not be wonBy blind heroics. Much that his enemies challengedWas not yet wholly proven, though his mindHad leapt to a certainty. He must leave the restTo those that should come after, swift and young,—Those runners with the torch for whom he longedAs his deliverers. Had he chosen deathBefore his hour, his proofs had been obscuredFor many a year. His respite gave him timeTo push new pawns out, in the blindfold playOf those last months, and checkmate, not the ChurchBut those that hid behind her. He believedHis truth was all harmonious with her own.How could he choose between them? Must he dieTo affirm a discord that himself denied?On many a point, he was less sure than we:But surer far of much that we forgetThe movements that he saw he could but judgeBy some fixed point in space. He chose the sun.Could this be absolute? Could he then be sureThat this great sun did not with all its worldsMove round a deeper centre? What becameOf your Copernicus then? Could he be sureOf any unchanging centre, whence to judgeThis myriad-marching universe, but one—The absolute throne of God.Affirming thisEternal Rock, his own uncertaintiesBecame more certain, and although his lipsBreathed not a syllable of it, though he stoodSilent as earth that also seemed so still,The very silence thundered,yet it moves!
He held to what he knew, secured his workThrough feeble hands like mine, in other lands,Not least in England, as I think you know.For, partly through your poet, as I believe,When his great music rolled upon your skies,New thoughts were kindled in the general mind.'Twas at Arcetri that your Milton gainedThe first great glimpse of his celestial realm.Picture him,—still a prisoner of our light,Closing his glorious eyes—that in the dark,He might behold this wheeling universe,—The planets gilding their ethereal hornsWith sun-fire. Many a pure immortal phraseIn his own work, as I have pondered it,Lived first upon the lips of him whose eyesWere darkened first,—in whom, too, Milton foundThat Samson Agonistes, not himself,As many have thought, but my dear master dead.These are a part of England's memories now,The music blown upon her sea-bright airWhen, in the year of Galileo's death,Newton, the mightiest of the sons of light,Was born to lift the splendour of this torchAnd carry it, as I heard that Tycho saidLong since to Kepler, "carry it out of sight,Into the great new age I must not know,Into the great new realm I must not tread."