Do those fools Who thought me an infidel then, still smile at me For 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 G.o.d Beyond the bounds of Egypt.
They will forget My 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 pa.s.s 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 skies And found, by accident, let them call it so, Or by the inspiration of that Power Which built His world of music, those three laws:-- First, how the speed of planets round the sun Bears a proportion, beautifully precise As music, to their silver distances; Next, that although they seem to swerve aside From those plain circles of old Copernicus Their paths were not less rhythmical and exact, But followed always that most exquisite curve In its most perfect form, the pure ellipse; Third, that although their speed from point to point Appeared to change, their radii always moved Through equal fields of s.p.a.ce in equal times.
Was this my infidelity, was this Less full of beauty, less divine in truth, Than their dull chaos? You, the poet will know How, as those dark perplexities grew clear, And old anomalous discords changed to song, My whole soul bowed and cried, _Almighty G.o.d These are Thy thoughts, I am thinking after Thee!_ I hope that Tycho knows. I owed so much To Tycho Brahe; for it was he who built The towers from which I hailed those three great laws.
How strange and far away it all seems now.
The thistles grow upon that little isle Where Tycho"s great Uraniborg once was.
Yet, for a few sad years, before it fell Into decay and ruin, there was one Who crept about its crumbling corridors, And lit the fire of memory on its hearth."-- Wotton looked quickly up, "I think I have heard Something of that. You mean poor Jeppe, his dwarf.
Fynes Moryson, at the Mermaid Inn one night Showed a most curious ma.n.u.script, a scrawl On yellow parchment, crusted here and there With sea-salt, or the salt of those thick tears Creatures like Jeppe, the crooked dwarf, could weep.
It had been found, clasped in a crooked hand, Under the cliffs of Wheen, a crooked hand That many a time had beckoned to pa.s.sing ships, Hoping to find some voyager who would take A letter to its master.
The sailors laughed And jeered at him, till Jeppe threw stones at them.
And now Jeppe, too, was dead, and one who knew Fynes Moryson, had found him, and brought home That curious crooked scrawl. Fynes Englished it Out of its barbarous Danish. Thus it ran: "Master, have you forgotten Jeppe, your dwarf, Who used to lie beside the big log-fire And feed from your own hand? The hall is dark, There are no voices now,--only the wind And 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 saw The white sails dwindling into sea-gull"s wings, Then melting into foam, and all was dark.
I lay among the wild flowers on the cliff And dug my nails into the stiff white chalk And called you, Tycho Brahe. You did not hear; But gulls and jackdaws, wheeling round my head, Mocked me with _Tycho Brahe_, and _Tycho 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 pen Here in your study. I will write it down And send it by a sailor to the King Of Scotland, and who knows, the mouse that gnawed The lion free, may save you, Tycho Brahe.""
"He is free now," said Kepler, "had he lived He would have sent for Jeppe to join him there At 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 fact By even a hair"s-breadth, so that his results Made a pure circle of that planet"s path It might have baffled us for an age and drowned All our new light in darkness. But he held To what he saw. He might so easily, So comfortably have said, "My instruments Are crude and fallible. In so fine a point Eyes 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 see Until 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 heard Profounder tones of harmony resolve Those broken melodies into song again."-- "Faintly and far away, I, too, have seen In music, and in verse, that golden clue Whereof you speak," said Wotton. "In all true song, There is a hidden logic. Even the rhyme That, in bad poets, wrings the neck of thought, Is like a subtle calculus to the true, An instrument of discovery. It reveals New harmonies, new a.n.a.logies. It links Far things and near, not in unnatural chains, But in those true accords which still escape The plodding reason, yet unify the world.
I caught some glimpses of this mystic power In verses of your own, that elegy On 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 high And feast on nectar in the halls of light."_
My version lacks the glory of your lines But..."
"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 pa.s.s the torch from hand to hand An undimmed splendour. But, last night, I tried Some music all my own. I had a dream That 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 spring Upon the planet, Venus. Only verse Could 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 proof Of poor old Kepler"s madness."-- "Let me hear, Madman to madman; for I, too, write verse."
Then Kepler, in a rhythmic murmur, breathed His rich enchanted memories of that dream:
"Beauty burned before me Swinging a lanthorn through that fragrant night.
I followed a distant singing, And a dreaming light How she led me, I cannot tell To that strange world afar, Nor how I walked, in that wild glen Upon the sunset star.
Winged creatures floated Under 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 world Followed 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 sealed To what the Hesperians knew, The faithful lanthorn of her law Was 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 opals To lure their loves at night; Dark beings that could move in realms No dream of ours has known.
Till these became as common things As men account their own.
Yet, when that lanthorn led me Back 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 fields As in that strange re-birth I looked on those wild miracles The birds and flowers of earth."
Silence a moment held them, loth to break The spell of that strange dream, "One proof the more"
Said Wotton at last, "that songs can mount and fly To truth; for this fantastic vision of yours Of life in other spheres, awakes in me, Either that slumbering knowledge of Socrates, Or some strange premonition that the years Will prove it true. This music leads us far From 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 destroy The temple, in three days the truth will build A n.o.bler temple; and that order reigns In all things. Even your atheist builds his doubt On that strange faith; destroys his heaven and G.o.d In absolute faith that his own thought is true To law, G.o.d"s lanthorn to our stumbling feet; And so, despite himself, he worships G.o.d, For where true souls are, there are G.o.d 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 cried _Caeli narrant Gloriam Dei!_ Though there be some to-day Who"d ape Lucretius, and believe themselves Epicureans, little they know of him Who, even in utter darkness, bowed his head, To something n.o.bler than the G.o.ds of Rome Reigning beyond the darkness.
They accept The 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 rise By chance from chaos, as they said that star In Serpentarius rose? I told them, then, That when I was a boy, with time to spare, I played at anagrams. Out of my Latin name _Johannes Keplerus_ came that sinister phrase _Serpens in akuleo_. Struck by this, I tried again, but trusted it to chance.
I took some playing cards, and wrote on each One letter of my name. Then I began To shuffle them; and, at every shuffle, I read The letters, in their order, as they came, To see what meaning chance might give to them.
Wotton, the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses must have laughed To see the weeks I lost in studying chance; For had I scattered those cards into the black Epicurean eternity, I"ll swear They"d still be playing at leap-frog in the dark, And show no glimmer of sense. And yet--to hear Those wittols talk, you"d think you"d but to mix A bushel of good Greek letters in a sack And 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 night When I was tired and all my mind a-dust With pondering on their atoms, I was called To supper, and she placed before me there A 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 about From all eternity, one sure certain day The sweet invisible hand of Happy Chance Would serve them as a salad."
"Likely enough,"
My wife replied, "but not so good as mine, Nor so well dressed.""
They laughed. Susannah"s voice Broke in, "I"ve made a better one. The receipt Came from the _Golden Lion_. I have dished Ducklings and peas and all. Come, John, say grace."
IV
GALILEO
I
(_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 me The funeral tapers lighted, send this cry Out of my heart to yours, before the end.
You told me once you would endure the rack To save my heart one pang. O, save it now!
Last night there came a dreadful word from Rome For my dear lord and father, summoning him Before the inquisitors there, to take his trial At threescore years and ten. There is a threat Of torture, if his lips will not deny The truth his eyes have seen.
You know my father, You know me, too. You never will believe That 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 heavens Opened 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 springs And fountain-heads of truth. It is not Rome That summons him, but Magini, Sizy, Scheiner, Lorini, all the blind, pedantic crew That envy him his fame, and hate his works For dwarfing theirs.
Must such things always be When 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 done And happiness to be. We did not dream That even then, muttering above his book, His enemies, those enemies whom the truth Stings into hate, were plotting to destroy him.
Yet something shadowed him. I recall his words-- "The grapes are ripening. See, Celeste, how black And 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 know Your 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 ripe And fall, and then comes winter."
"Not for you!
Never," I said, "for those who write their names In heaven. Think, father, through all ages now No one can ever watch that starry sky Without remembering you. Your fame ..."
And there He stopped me, laid his hand upon my arm, And standing in the darkness with dead leaves Drifting around him, and his bare grey head Bowed in complete humility, his voice Shaken 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 live In act and thought. I have looked up there and seen Too 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 halt The great sun-cl.u.s.ters moving on their way In 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 one With universal forces, and he holds The pa.s.sword 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 say A better word," I told him. "I"ll say love."