Tycho Brake Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: A BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ RSTUBVWXYZNA2B2C2D2E 2F2G2A2BH2MI2J2MK2L2 SM2N2WL2SO2P2Q2AR2S2 T2NU2V2W2X2Y2SZ2QA3S B3SC3D3E3F3YSG3BH3SI 3J3MK3L3M3N3QQHO3M AP3SNW2Q3JQP3R3SWQS3 T3U3H2V3AA2SV3FW3QX3 SY3Z3S3W2W3C A4ZB4C4D4QX3QSE4F4QQ G4H4I4J4QK4SB4Q2L4QQ QYQQS B4M4QAI4N4A2B3QN4O4S DSL2LI4QL2P4Q4QU2B4R 4PNQX3Q A V2S2QN4XBY2W3S4QQQQN 3T4U4HQR3QSV4W4X4QNY 4X3Z4ML2SS PH2S2X4L2AQSY4F3NQSP A B3QX3QYQ4L2FNN4SW4H2 O3 BB3W2O3QQSSSJ4QSB4SQ Q4QQQQ SQSB4QQ2QQSB SI4QFQNF3X3A2SY3 SQQNQS L2NA2NSSA2NSNL2QL2SS QNQQSNNQNQSR4QA2NNNQ QQNO4QS QQW2MNSQYSNNL2MQNBBO 4QQS Q BQSQY4 NQQQSNQQ NMQSNQF3NSQSSQQBQL4Q 4QQQBQSQNNQQQ QQQQSQQQNQBQQQQQS N BQNSQNQSQNSQ2NNNSNSN SY4QSQMBQSQSNMQNS NQQQQSNSNQQSF3SF3 NNNSNN NNNMSMS NNQQNNNQQBQQQ2NSQQSN QSQQSN Q QQSS SSL4L4 QQQQS SQ4Q4SS BQQBQQ4BQ4Q4Q4QSNSSB NQNSSQNNQQSQQQQSSNQQ 4QQQQNNNQ4Q4 SQSNQ SQ4SBNQNSNQSO4NBNSNQ F3Q4SQS NNQNQNSQS QSNQ4SNQ4SSMBSNSSSSS F3 SSQSNSSNSQQSNNSQ4QBQ SSF3NQSQQNNQQSSQQSQS BQS QQSSSSQSQSQSNQ4NSSSB NSMSSSSSNY4SMSSSQSQM QSNSQSSBQ4 SSSSSNBNSQ4NNSQQSQN Q BQQQ4NQNMQQN SSSSSF3SSF3SQ4NQSSQQ 4NQ4SSNSBQ4NQNSSSSSQ Q4QQBNSSY4SSI | A |
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They thought him a magician Tycho Brahe | B |
Who lived on that strange island in the Sound | C |
Nine miles from Elsinore | D |
His legend reached | E |
The Mermaid Inn the year that Shakespeare died | F |
Fynes Moryson had brought his travellers' tales | G |
Of Wheen the heart shaped isle where Tycho made | H |
His great discoveries and with Jeppe his dwarf | I |
And flaxen haired Christine the peasant girl | J |
Dreamed his great dreams for five and twenty years | K |
For there he lit that lanthorn of the law | L |
Uraniborg that fortress of the truth | M |
With Pegasus flying above its loftiest tower | N |
While in its roofs like wide enchanted eyes | O |
Watching the brightest windows in the world | P |
Opened upon the stars | Q |
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Nine miles from Elsinore with all those ghosts | R |
There's magic enough in that But white cliffed Wheen | S |
Six miles in girth with crowds of hunchback waves | T |
Crawling all round it and those moonstruck windows | U |
Held its own magic too for Tycho Brahe | B |
By his mysterious alchemy of dreams | V |
Had so enriched the soil that when the king | W |
Of England wished to buy it Denmark asked | X |
A price too great for any king on earth | Y |
Give us they said in scarlet cardinal's cloth | Z |
Enough to cover it and at every corner | N |
Of every piece a right rose noble too | A2 |
Then all that kings can buy of Wheen is yours | B2 |
Only said they a merchant bought it once | C2 |
And when he came to claim it goblins flocked | D2 |
All round him from its forty goblin farms | E2 |
And mocked him bidding him take away the stones | F2 |
That he had bought for nothing else was his | G2 |
These things were fables They were also true | A2 |
They thought him a magician Tycho Brahe | B |
The astrologer who wore the mask of gold | H2 |
Perhaps he was There's magic in the truth | M |
And only those who find and follow its laws | I2 |
Can work its miracles | J2 |
Tycho sought the truth | M |
From that strange year in boyhood when he heard | K2 |
The great eclipse foretold and on the day | L2 |
Appointed at the very minute even | S |
Beheld the weirdly punctual shadow creep | M2 |
Across the sun bewildering all the birds | N2 |
With thoughts of evening | W |
Picture him on that day | L2 |
The boy at Copenhagen with his mane | S |
Of thick red hair thrusting his freckled face | O2 |
Out of his upper window holding the piece | P2 |
Of glass he blackened above his candle flame | Q2 |
To watch that orange ember in the sky | A |
Wane into smouldering ash | R2 |
He whispered there | S2 |
So it is true By searching in the heavens | T2 |
Men can foretell the future | N |
In the street | U2 |
Below him throngs were babbling of the plague | V2 |
That might or might not follow | W2 |
He resolved | X2 |
To make himself the master of that deep art | Y2 |
And know what might be known | S |
He bought the books | Z2 |
Of Stadius with his tables of the stars | Q |
Night after night among the gabled roofs | A3 |
Climbing and creeping through a world unknown | S |
Save to the roosting stork he learned to find | B3 |
The constellations Cassiopeia's throne | S |
The Plough still pointing to the Polar Star | C3 |
The sword belt of Orion There he watched | D3 |
The movements of the planets hours on hours | E3 |
And wondered at the mystery of it all | F3 |
All this he did in secret for his birth | Y |
Was noble and such wonderings were a sign | S |
Of low estate when Tycho Brahe was young | G3 |
And all his kinsmen hoped that Tycho Brahe | B |
Would live serene as they among his dogs | H3 |
And horses or if honour must be won | S |
Let the superfluous glory flow from fields | I3 |
Where blood might still be shed or from those courts | J3 |
Where statesmen lie But Tycho sought the truth | M |
So when they sent him in his tutor's charge | K3 |
To Leipzig for such studies as they held | L3 |
More worthy of his princely blood he searched | M3 |
The Almagest and while his tutor slept | N3 |
Measured the delicate angles of the stars | Q |
Out of his window with his compasses | Q |
His only instrument Even with this rude aid | H |
He found so many an ancient record wrong | O3 |
That more and more he burned to find the truth | M |
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One night at home as Tycho searched the sky | A |
Out of his window compasses in hand | P3 |
Fixing one point upon a planet one | S |
Upon some loftier star a ripple of laughter | N |
Startled him from the garden walk below | W2 |
He lowered his compass peered into the dark | Q3 |
And saw Christine the blue eyed peasant girl | J |
With bare brown feet standing among the flowers | Q |
She held what seemed an apple in her hand | P3 |
And in a voice that Aprilled all his blood | R3 |
The low soft voice of earth drawing him down | S |
From those cold heights to that warm breast of Spring | W |
A natural voice that had not learned to use | Q |
The false tones of the world simple and clear | S3 |
As a bird's voice out of the fragrant darkness called | T3 |
I saw it falling from your window ledge | U3 |
I thought it was an apple till it rolled | H2 |
Over my foot | V3 |
It's heavy Shall I try | A |
To throw it back to you | A2 |
Tycho saw a stain | S |
Of purple across one small arched glistening foot | V3 |
Your foot Is bruised he cried | F |
O no she laughed | W3 |
And plucked the stain off Only a petal see | Q |
She showed it to him | X3 |
But this I wonder now | S |
If I can throw it | Y3 |
Twice she tried and failed | Z3 |
Or Tycho failed to catch that slippery sphere | S3 |
He saw the supple body swaying below | W2 |
The ripe red lips that parted as she laughed | W3 |
And those deep eyes where all the stars were drowned | C |
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At the third time he caught it and she vanished | A4 |
Waving her hand a little floating moth | Z |
Between the pine trees into the warm dark night | B4 |
He turned into his room and quickly thrust | C4 |
Under his pillow that forbidden fruit | D4 |
For the door opened and the hot red face | Q |
Of Otto Brahe his father glowered at him | X3 |
What's this What's this | Q |
The furious eyed old man | S |
Limped to the bedside pulled the mystery out | E4 |
And stared upon the strangest apple of Eve | F4 |
That ever troubled Eden heavy as bronze | Q |
And delicately enchased with silver stars | Q |
The small celestial globe that Tycho bought | G4 |
In Leipzig | H4 |
Then the storm burst on his head | I4 |
This moon struck 'pothecary's prentice work | J4 |
These cheap jack calendar maker's gypsy tricks | Q |
Would damn the mother of any Knutsdorp squire | K4 |
And crown his father like a stag of ten | S |
Quarrel on quarrel followed from that night | B4 |
Till Tycho sickened of his ancient name | Q2 |
And wandering through the woods about his home | L4 |
Found on a hill top ringed with fragrant pines | Q |
A little open glade of whispering ferns | Q |
Thither at night he stole to watch the stars | Q |
And there he told the oldest tale on earth | Y |
To one that watched beside him one whose eyes | Q |
Shone with true love more beautiful than the stars | Q |
A daughter of earth the peasant girl Christine | S |
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They met there in the dusk on his last night | B4 |
At home before he went to Wittenberg | M4 |
They stood knee deep among the whispering ferns | Q |
And said good bye | A |
I shall return he said | I4 |
And shame them for their folly who would set | N4 |
Their pride above the stars Christine and you | A2 |
At Wittenberg or Rostoch I shall find | B3 |
More chances and more knowledge All those worlds | Q |
Are still to conquer We know nothing yet | N4 |
The books are crammed with fables They foretell | O4 |
Here an eclipse and there a dawning moon | S |
But most of them were out a month or more | D |
On Jupiter and Saturn | S |
There's one way | L2 |
And only one to knowledge of the law | L |
Whereby the stars are steered and so to read | I4 |
The future even perhaps the destinies | Q |
Of men and nations only one sure way | L2 |
And that's to watch them watch them and record | P4 |
The truth we know and not the lies we dream | Q4 |
Dear while I watch them though the hills and sea | Q |
Divide us every night our eyes can meet | U2 |
Among those constant glories Every night | B4 |
Your eyes and mine upraised to that bright realm | R4 |
Can in one moment speak across the world | P |
I shall come back with knowledge and with power | N |
And you will wait for me | Q |
She answered him | X3 |
In silence with the starlight of her eyes | Q |
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II | A |
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He watched the skies at Wittenberg The plague | V2 |
Drove him to Rostoch and he watched them there | S2 |
But even there the plague of little minds | Q |
Beset him At a wedding feast he met | N4 |
His noble countryman Manderup who asked | X |
With mocking courtesy whether Tycho Brahe | B |
Was ready yet to practise his black art | Y2 |
At country fairs The guests and Tycho laughed | W3 |
Whereat the swaggering Junker blandly sneered | S4 |
If fortune telling fail Christine will dance | Q |
Thus tambourine on hip he struck a pose | Q |
Her pretty feet will pack that booth of yours | Q |
They fought at midnight in a wood with swords | Q |
And not a spark of light but those that leapt | N3 |
Blue from the clashing blades Tycho had lost | T4 |
His moon and stars awhile almost his life | U4 |
For in one furious bout his enemy's blade | H |
Dashed like a scribble of lightning into the face | Q |
Of Tycho Brahe and left him spluttering blood | R3 |
Groping through that dark wood with outstretched hands | Q |
To fall in a death black swoon | S |
They carried him back | V4 |
To Rostoch and when Tycho saw at last | W4 |
That mirrored patch of mutilated flesh | X4 |
Seared as by fire between the frank blue eyes | Q |
And firm young mouth where like a living flower | N |
Upon some stricken tree youth lingered still | Y4 |
He'd but one thought Christine would shrink from him | X3 |
In fear or worse in pity An end had come | Z4 |
Worse than old age to all the glory of youth | M |
Urania would not let her lover stray | L2 |
Into a mortal's arms He must remain | S |
Her own for ever and for ever alone | S |
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Yet as the days went by to face the world | P |
He made himself a delicate mask of gold | H2 |
And silver shaped like those that minstrels wear | S2 |
At carnival in Venice or when love | |
Disguising its disguise of mortal flesh | X4 |
Wooes as a nameless prince from far away | L2 |
And when this world's day with its blaze and coil | |
Was ended and the first white star awoke | |
In that pure realm where all our tumults die | A |
His eyes and hers meeting on Hesperus | Q |
Renewed their troth | |
He seemed to see Christine | S |
Ringed by the pine trees on that distant hill | Y4 |
A small white figure lost in space and time | |
Yet gazing at the sky and conquering all | F3 |
Height depth and heaven itself by the sheer power | N |
Of love at one with everlasting laws | Q |
A love that shared the constancy of heaven | S |
And spoke to him across above the world | P |
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III | A |
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Not till he crossed the Danube did he find | B3 |
Among the fountains and the storied eaves | Q |
Of Augsburg one to share his task with him | X3 |
Paul Hainzel of that city greatly loved | |
To talk with Tycho of the strange new dreams | Q |
Copernicus had kindled Did this earth | Y |
Move Was the sun the centre of our scheme | Q4 |
And Tycho told him there is but one way | L2 |
To know the truth and that's to sweep aside | F |
All the dark cobwebs of old sophistry | N |
And watch and learn that moving alphabet | N4 |
Each smallest silver character inscribed | |
Upon the skies themselves noting them down | S |
Till on a day we find them taking shape | |
In phrases with a meaning and at last | W4 |
The hard won beauty of that celestial book | |
With all its epic harmonies unfold | H2 |
Like some great poet's universal song | O3 |
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He was a great magician Tycho Brahe | B |
Hainzel he said we have no magic wand | |
But what the truth can give us If we find | B3 |
Even with a compass through a bedroom window | W2 |
That half the glittering Almagest is wrong | O3 |
Think you what noble conquests might be ours | Q |
Had we but nobler instruments | Q |
He showed | |
Quivering with eagerness his first rude plan | S |
For that great quadrant not the wooden toy | |
Of old Scultetus but a kingly weapon | S |
Huge as a Roman battering ram and fine | S |
In its divisions as any goldsmith's work | J4 |
It could be built said Tycho but the cost | |
Would buy a dozen culverin for your wars | Q |
Then Hainzel fired by Tycho's burning brain | S |
Answered We'll make it We've a war to wage | |
On Chaos and his kingdoms of the night | B4 |
They chose the cunningest artists of the town | S |
Clock makers jewellers carpenters and smiths | Q |
And setting them all afire with Tycho's dream | Q4 |
Within a month his dream was oak and brass | Q |
Its beams were fourteen cubits solid oak | |
Banded with iron Its arch was polished brass | Q |
Whereon five thousand exquisite divisions | Q |
Were marked to show the minutes of degrees | Q |
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So huge and heavy it was a score of men | S |
Could hardly drag and fix it to its place | Q |
In Hainzel's garden | S |
Many a shining night | B4 |
Tycho and Hainzel out of that maze of flowers | Q |
Charted the stars discovering point by point | |
How all the records erred until the fame | Q2 |
Of this new master hovering above the schools | Q |
Like a strange hawk threatened the creeping dreams | Q |
Of all the Aristotelians and began | S |
To set their mouse holes twittering Tycho Brahe | B |
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Then Tycho Brahe came home to find Christine | S |
Up to that whispering glade of ferns he sped | I4 |
At the first wink of Hesperus | Q |
He stood | |
In shadow under the darkest pine to hide | F |
The little golden mask upon his face | Q |
He wondered will she shrink from me in fear | N |
Or loathing Will she even come at all | F3 |
And as he wondered like a light she moved | |
Before him | X3 |
Is it you | A2 |
Christine Christine | S |
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 | Y3 |
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Her red lips parted and between them shone | S |
The little teeth like white pomegranate seeds | Q |
He saw her frightened eyes | Q |
Then with a cry | N |
Her arms went round him and her eyelids closed | |
Lying against his heart she set her lips | Q |
Against his lips and claimed him for her own | S |
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One frosty night as Tycho bent his way | L2 |
Home to the dark old abbey he upraised | |
His eyes and saw a portent in the sky | N |
There in its most familiar patch of blue | A2 |
Where Cassiopeia's five fold glory burned | |
An unknown brilliance quivered a huge star | N |
Unseen before a strange new visitant | |
To heavens unchangeable as the world believed | |
Since the creation | S |
Could new stars be born | S |
Night after night he watched that miracle | |
Growing and changing colour as it grew | A2 |
White at the first and large as Jupiter | N |
And in the third month yellow and larger yet | |
Red in the fifth month like Aldebaran | S |
And larger even than Lyra In the seventh | |
Bluish like Saturn whence it dulled and dwined | |
Little by little till after eight months more | N |
Into the dark abysmal blue of night | |
Whence it arose the wonder died away | L2 |
But while it blazed above him Tycho brought | |
Those delicate records of two hundred nights | Q |
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 | L2 |
In satin hose and doublet supple and thin | S |
Brown eyed and bearded with a soft black tuft | |
Neat as a blackbird's wing a spirit as keen | S |
And swift as France on all the starry trails | Q |
Of thought | |
He saw the deep and simple fire | N |
The mystery of all genius in those eyes | Q |
Above that golden wizard | |
Tycho raised | |
His wine cup brimming they thought with purple dreams | Q |
And bade them drink to their triumphant Queen | S |
Of all the Muses to their Lady of Light | |
Urania and the great new star | N |
They laughed | |
Thinking the young astrologer's golden mask | |
Hid a sardonic jest | |
The skies are clear | N |
Said Tycho Brahe and we have eyes to see | Q |
Put out your candles Open those windows there | N |
The colder darkness breathed upon their brows | Q |
And Tycho pointed into the deep blue night | |
There in their most immutable height of heaven | S |
In ipso caelo in the ethereal realm | R4 |
Beyond all planets red as Mars it burned | |
The one impossible glory | Q |
But it's true | A2 |
Pratensis gasped then clutching the first straw | N |
Now I recall how Pliny the Elder said | |
Hipparchus also saw a strange new star | N |
Not where the comets not where the Rosae bloom | |
And fade but in that solid crystal sphere | N |
Where nothing changes | Q |
Tycho smiled and showed | |
The record of his watchings | Q |
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 | Q |
Of work with hands or brain no matter why | N |
No matter how in one who ought to dwell | O4 |
Fixed to the solid upper sphere my friends | Q |
Would never be forgiven | S |
Dancey stared | |
In mute amazement but that mask of gold | |
Outstared him sphinx like and inscrutable | |
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Soon through all Europe like the blinded moths | Q |
Roused by a lantern in old palaces | Q |
Among the mouldering tapestries of thought | |
Weird fables woke and fluttered to and fro | W2 |
And wild eyed sages hunted them for truth | M |
The Italian Frangipani thought the star | N |
The lost Electra that had left her throne | S |
Among the Pleiads and plunged into the night | |
Like a veiled mourner when Troy town was burned | |
The German painter Busch of Erfurt wrote | |
It was a comet made of mortal sins | Q |
A poisonous mist touched by the wrath of God | |
To fire from which there would descend on earth | Y |
All manner of evil plagues and sudden death | |
Frenchmen and famine | S |
Preachers thumped and raved | |
Theodore Beza in Calvin's pulpit tore | N |
His grim black gown and vowed it was the Star | N |
That led the Magi It had now returned | |
To mark the world's end and the Judgment Day | L2 |
Then in this hubbub Dancey told the king | |
Of Denmark There is one who knows the truth | M |
Your subject Tycho Brahe who night by night | |
Watched and recorded all that truth could see | Q |
It would bring honour to all Denmark sire | N |
If Tycho could forget his rank awhile | |
And print these great discoveries in a book | |
For all the world to read | |
So Tycho Brahe | B |
Received a letter in the king's own hand | |
Urging him Truth is the one pure fountain head | |
Of all nobility Pray forget your rank | |
His noble kinsmen echoed If you wish | |
To please His Majesty and ourselves forget | |
Your rank | |
I will said Tycho Brahe | B |
Your reasoning has convinced me I will print | |
My book 'De Nova Stella ' And to prove | |
All you have said concerning temporal rank | |
And this eternal truth you love so well | O4 |
I marry to day they foamed but all their mouths | Q |
Were stopped and stuffed and sealed with their own words | Q |
I marry to day my own true love Christine | S |
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V | Q |
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They thought him a magician Tycho Brahe | B |
Perhaps he was There's magic all around us | Q |
In rocks and trees and in the minds of men | S |
Deep hidden springs of magic | |
He that strikes | Q |
The rock aright may find them where he will | Y4 |
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And Tycho tasted happiness in his hour | N |
There was a prince in Denmark in those days | Q |
And when he heard how other kings desired | |
The secrets of this new astrology | Q |
He said This man in after years will bring | |
Glory to Denmark honour to her prince | Q |
He is a Dane Give him this isle of Wheen | S |
And let him make his great discoveries there | N |
Let him have gold to buy his instruments | Q |
And build his house and his observatory | Q |
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So Tycho set this island where he lived | |
Whispering with wizardry and in its heart | |
He lighted that strange lanthorn of the law | N |
And built himself that wonder of the world | |
Uraniborg a fortress for the truth | M |
A city of the heavens | Q |
Around it ran | S |
A mighty rampart twenty two feet high | N |
And twenty feet in thickness at the base | Q |
Its angles pointed north south east and west | |
With gates and turrets and within this wall | F3 |
Were fruitful orchards apple and cherry and pear | N |
And sheltered in their midst from all but sun | S |
A garden warm and busy with singing bees | Q |
There many an hour his flaxen haired Christine | S |
Sang to her child her first born Magdalen | S |
Or watched her playing a flower among the flowers | Q |
Dark in the centre of that zone of bliss | Q |
Arose the magic towers of Tycho Brahe | B |
Two of them had great windows in their roofs | Q |
Opening upon the sky where'er he willed | |
And under these observatories he made | |
A library of many a golden book | |
Poets and sages of old Greece and Rome | L4 |
And many a mellow legend many a dream | Q4 |
Of dawning truth in Egypt or the dusk | |
Of Araby Under all of these he made | |
A subterranean crypt for alchemy | Q |
With sixteen furnaces and under this | Q |
He sank a well so deep that Jeppe declared | |
He had tapped the central fountains of the world | |
And drew his magic from those cold clear springs | Q |
This was the very well said Jeppe the dwarf | |
Where Truth was hidden but by Tycho Brahe | B |
And his weird skill the magic water flowed | |
Through pipes uphill to all the house above | |
The kitchen where his cooks could broil a trout | |
For sages or prepare a feast for kings | Q |
The garrets for the students in the roof | |
The guest rooms and the red room to the north | |
The study and the blue room to the south | |
The small octagonal yellow room that held | |
The sunlight like a jewel all day long | |
And Magdalen with her happy dreams at night | |
Then facing to the west one long green room | |
The ceiling painted like the bower of Eve | |
With flowers and leaves the windows opening wide | |
Through which Christine and Tycho Brahe at dawn | S |
Could see the white sails drifting on the Sound | |
Like petals from their orchard | |
To the north | |
He built a printing house for noble books | Q |
Poems and those deep legends of the sky | N |
Still to be born at his Uraniborg | N |
Beyond the rampart to the north arose | Q |
A workshop for his instruments To the south | |
A low thatched farm house rambled round a yard | |
Alive with clucking hens and further yet | |
To southward on another hill he made | |
A great house for his larger instruments | Q |
And called it Stiernborg mountain of the stars | Q |
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And on his towers and turrets Tycho set | |
Statues with golden verses in the praise | Q |
Of famous men the bearers of the torch | |
From Ptolemy to the new Copernicus | Q |
Then in that storm proof mountain of the stars | Q |
He set in all their splendour of new made brass | Q |
His armouries for the assault of heaven | S |
Circles in azimuth armillary spheres | Q |
Revolving zodiacs with great brazen rings | Q |
Quadrants of solid brass ten cubits broad | |
Brass parallactic rules made to revolve | |
In azimuth clocks with wheels an astrolabe | |
And that large globe strengthened by oaken beams | Q |
He made at Augsburg | N |
All his gold he spent | |
But Denmark had a prince in those great days | Q |
And in his brain the dreams of Tycho Brahe | B |
Kindled a thirst for glory So he made | |
Tycho the Lord of sundry lands and rents | Q |
And Keeper of the Chapel where the kings | Q |
Of Oldenburg were buried for he said | |
To whom could all these kings entrust their bones | Q |
More fitly than to him who read the stars | Q |
And though a mortal knew immortal laws | Q |
And paced at night the silent halls of heaven | S |
- | |
- | |
- | |
- | |
VI | N |
- | |
- | |
He was a great magician Tycho Brahe | B |
There on his island for a score of years | Q |
He watched the skies recording star on star | N |
For future ages and by patient toil | |
Perfected his great tables of the sun | S |
The moon the planets | Q |
There too happy far | N |
For any history sons and daughters rose | Q |
A little clan of love around Christine | S |
And Tycho thought when I am dead my sons | Q |
Will rule and work in my Uraniborg | N |
And yet a doubt would trouble him for he knew | S |
The children of Christine would still be held | |
Ignoble by the world | |
Disciples came | Q2 |
Young eyed and swift the bearers of the torch | |
From many a city to Uraniborg | N |
And Tycho Brahe received them like a king | N |
And bade them light their torches at his fire | N |
The King of Scotland came with all his court | |
And dwelt eight days in Tycho Brahe's domain | S |
Asking him many a riddle deep and dark | N |
Whose answer none the less a king should know | S |
What boots it on this earth to be a king | N |
To rule a part of earth and not to know | S |
The worth of his own realm whether he rule | |
As God's vice gerent and his realm be still | Y4 |
The centre of the centre of all worlds | Q |
Or whether as Copernicus proclaimed | |
This earth itself be moving a lost grain | S |
Of dust among the innumerable stars | Q |
For this would dwarf all glory but the soul | |
In king or peasant that can hail the truth | M |
Though truth should slay it | |
So to Tycho Brahe | B |
The king became a subject for eight days | Q |
But in the crowded hall when he had gone | S |
Jeppe raised his matted head with a chuckle of glee | Q |
Quiet as the gurgle of joy in a dark rock pool | |
When the first ripple and wash of the first spring tide | |
Flows bubbling under the dry sun blackened fringe | |
Of seaweed setting it all afloat again | S |
In magical colours like a merman's hair | N |
Jeppe has a thought the gay young students cried | |
Thronging him round for all believed that Jeppe | |
Was fey and had strange visions of the truth | M |
What is the thought Jeppe | |
I can think no thoughts | Q |
Croaked Jeppe But I have made myself a song | N |
Silence they cried for Jeppe the nightingale | |
Sing Jeppe | |
And wagging his great head to and fro | S |
Before the fire with deep dark eyes he crooned | |
- | |
THE SONG OF JEPPE | |
- | |
What said the king | N |
Is earth a bird or bee | Q |
Can this uncharted boundless realm of ours | Q |
Drone thro' the sky with leagues of struggling sea | Q |
Forests and hills and towns and palace towers | Q |
Ay said the dwarf | |
I have watched from Stiernborg's crown | S |
Her far dark rim uplift against the sky | N |
But while earth soars men say the stars go down | S |
And while earth sails men say the stars go by | N |
An elvish tale | |
Ask Jeppe the dwarf He knows | Q |
That's why his eyes look fey for chuckling deep | |
Heels over head amongst the stars he goes | Q |
As all men go but most are sound asleep | |
King saint sage | |
Even those that count it true | S |
Act as this miracle touched them not at all | F3 |
They are borne undizzied thro' the rushing blue | S |
And build their empires on a sky tossed ball | F3 |
- | |
Then said the king | N |
If earth so lightly move | |
What of my realm O what shall now stand sure | N |
Naught said the dwarf in all this world but love | |
All else is dream stuff and shall not endure | N |
'Tis nearer now | S |
Our universe hath no centre | N |
Our shadowy earth and fleeting heavens no stay | |
But that deep inward realm which each can enter | N |
Even Jeppe the dwarf by his own secret way | |
- | |
Where said the king | N |
O where I have not found it | |
Here said the dwarf and music echoed here | N |
This infinite circle hath no line to bound it | |
Therefore that deep strange centre is everywhere | N |
Let the earth soar thro' heaven that centre abideth | M |
Or plunge to the pit His covenant still holds true | S |
In the heart of a dying bird the Master hideth | M |
In the soul of a king said the dwarf | |
and in my soul too | S |
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- | |
- | |
- | |
VII | |
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Princes and courtiers came a few to seek | N |
A little knowledge many more to gape | |
In wonder at Tycho's gold and silver mask | N |
Or when they saw the beauty of his towers | Q |
Envy and hate him for them | |
Thus arose | Q |
The small grey cloud upon the distant sky | N |
That broke in storm at last | |
Beware croaked Jeppe | |
Lifting his shaggy head beside the fire | N |
When guests like these had gone Master beware | N |
And Tycho of the frank blue eyes would laugh | |
Even when he found Witichius playing him false | Q |
His anger like a momentary breeze | Q |
Died on the dreaming deep for Tycho Brahe | B |
Turned to a nobler riddle Have you thought | |
He asked his young disciples how the sea | Q |
Is moved to that strange rhythm we call the tides | Q |
He that can answer this shall have his name | Q2 |
Honoured among the bearers of the torch | |
While Pegasus flies above Uraniborg | N |
I was delayed three hours or more to day | |
By the neap tide The fishermen on the coast | |
Are never wrong They time it by the moon | S |
Post hoc perhaps not propter hoc and yet | |
Through all the changes of the sky and sea | Q |
That old white clock of ours with the battered face | Q |
Does seem infallible | |
There's a love song too | S |
The sailors on the coast of Sweden sing | N |
I have often pondered it Your courtly poets | Q |
Upbraid the inconstant moon But these men know | S |
The moon and sea are lovers and they move | |
In a most constant measure Hear the words | Q |
And tell me if you can what silver chains | Q |
Bind them together Then in a voice as low | S |
And rhythmical as the sea he spoke that song | N |
- | |
THE SHEPHERDESS OF THE SEA | Q |
- | |
Reproach not yet our sails' delay | |
You cannot see the shoaling bay | |
The banks of sand the fretful bars | Q |
That ebb left naked to the stars | Q |
The sea's white shepherdess the moon | S |
Shall lead us into harbour soon | S |
- | |
Dear when you see her glory shine | S |
Between your fragrant boughs of pine | S |
Know there is but one hour to wait | |
Before her hands unlock the gate | |
And the full flood of singing foam | L4 |
Follow her lovely footsteps home | L4 |
- | |
Then waves like flocks of silver sheep | |
Come rustling inland from the deep | |
And into rambling valleys press | Q |
Behind their heavenly shepherdess | Q |
You cannot see them Lift your eyes | Q |
And see their mistress in the skies | Q |
She rises with her silver bow | S |
- | |
I feel the tide begin to flow | S |
And every thought and hope and dream | Q4 |
Follow her call and homeward stream | Q4 |
Borne on the universal tide | |
The wanderer hastens to his bride | |
The sea's white shepherdess the moon | S |
Shall lead him into harbour soon | S |
- | |
- | |
- | |
- | |
VIII | |
- | |
- | |
He was a great magician Tycho Brahe | B |
But not so great that he could read the heart | |
Or rule the hand of princes | Q |
When his friend | |
King Frederick died the young Prince Christian reigned | |
And round him fool and knave made common cause | Q |
Against the magic that could pour their gold | |
Into a gulf of stars This Tycho Brahe | B |
Had grown too proud He held them in contempt | |
So they believed for when he spoke their thoughts | Q |
Crept at his feet like spaniels Junkerdom | Q4 |
Felt it was foolish for he towered above it | |
And so it hated him Did he not spend | |
Gold that a fool could spend as quickly as he | B |
Were there not great estates bestowed upon him | Q4 |
In wisdom's name that from the dawn of time | Q4 |
Had been the natural right of Junkerdom | Q4 |
And would he not bequeath them to his heirs | Q |
The children of Christine an unfree woman | S |
Why you sire even you they told the king | N |
He has made a laughing stock That horoscope | |
He read for you the night when you were born | S |
Printed and bound it in green velvet too | S |
Read it The whole world laughs at it He said | |
That Venus was the star that ruled your fate | |
And Venus would destroy you Tycho Brahe | B |
Inspired your royal father with the fear | N |
That kept your youth so long in leading strings | Q |
The fear that every pretty hedgerow flower | N |
Would be your Circe So he thought to avenge | |
Our mockery of this peasant girl Christine | S |
To whom indeed he plays the faithful swine | S |
Knowing full well his gold and silver nose | Q |
Would never win another | N |
Thus the sky | N |
Darkened above Uraniborg and those | Q |
Who dwelt within it till one evil day | |
One seeming happy day when Tycho marked | |
The 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 report | |
What use you make of these estates of yours | Q |
Your alchemy has turned more gold to lead | |
Than Denmark can approve The uses now | S |
Show us the uses of this work of yours | Q |
Then Tycho showed his tables of the stars | Q |
Seven hundred stars each noted in its place | Q |
With exquisite precision the result | |
Of watching heaven for five and twenty years | Q |
And is this all they said | |
They sought to invent | |
Some ground for damning him The truth alone | S |
Would serve them as it seemed For these were men | S |
Who could not understand | |
Not all I hope | |
Said Tycho for I think before I die | N |
I shall have marked a thousand | |
To what end | |
When shall we reap the fruits of all this toil | |
Show us its uses | Q |
In the time to come | Q4 |
Said Tycho Brahe perhaps a hundred years | Q |
Perhaps a thousand when our own poor names | Q |
Are quite forgotten and our kingdoms dust | |
On one sure certain day the torch bearers | Q |
Will at some point of contact see a light | |
Moving upon this chaos Though our eyes | Q |
Be shut for ever in an iron sleep | |
Their eyes shall see the kingdom of the law | N |
Our undiscovered cosmos They shall see it | |
A new creation rising from the deep | |
Beautiful whole | |
We are like men that hear | N |
Disjointed notes of some supernal choir | N |
Year after year we patiently record | |
All we can gather In that far off time | Q4 |
A people that we have not known shall hear them | Q4 |
Moving like music to a single end | |
- | |
They could not understand this life that sought | |
Only to bear the torch and hand it on | S |
And so they made report that all the dreams | Q |
Of Tycho Brahe were fruitless perilous too | S |
Since he avowed that any fruit they bore | N |
Would fall in distant years to alien hands | Q |
- | |
Little by little Walchendorp withdrew | S |
His rents from Tycho Brahe accusing him | Q4 |
Of gross neglects The Chapel at Roskilde | S |
Was falling into ruin Tycho Brahe | B |
Was Keeper of the Bones of Oldenburg | N |
He must rebuild the Chapel All the gifts | Q |
That Frederick gave to help him in his task | N |
Were turned to stumbling blocks till one dark day | S |
He called his young disciples round him there | N |
And in that mellow library of dreams | Q |
Lit by the dying sunset poured his heart | S |
And mind before them bidding them farewell | O4 |
Through the wide open windows as he spoke | N |
They heard the sorrowful whisper of the sea | B |
Ebbing and flowing around Uraniborg | N |
An end has come he said to all we planned | S |
Uraniborg has drained her treasury dry | N |
Your Alma Mater now must close her gates | Q |
On you her guests on me and worst of all | F3 |
On one most dear who made this place my home | Q4 |
For you are young your homes are all to win | S |
And you would all have gone your separate ways | Q |
In a brief while and though I think you love | |
Your college of the skies it could not mean | S |
All that it meant to those who called it 'home ' | - |
- | |
You that have worked with me for one brief year | N |
Will never quite forget Uraniborg | N |
This room the sunset gilding all those books | Q |
The star charts and that old celestial globe | |
The long bright evenings by the winter fire | N |
Of Tycho Brahe were fruitless perilous | Q |
The talk that opened heaven the songs you sung | N |
Yes even I think the tricks you played with Jeppe | |
Will somehow when yourselves are growing old | S |
Be hallowed into beauty touched with tears | Q |
For you will wish they might be yours again | S |
- | |
These have been mine for five and twenty years | Q |
And more than these the work the dreams I shared | S |
With you and others here My heart will break | N |
To leave them But the appointed time has come | Q4 |
As it must come to all men | S |
You and I | N |
Have watched too many constant stars to dream | Q4 |
That heaven or earth the destinies of men | S |
Or nations are the sport of chance An end | S |
Comes to us all through blindness age or death | M |
If mine must come in exile it stall find me | B |
Bearing the torch as far as I can bear it | S |
Until I fall at the feet of the young runner | N |
Who takes it from me and carries it out of sight | S |
Into the great new age I shall not know | S |
Into the great new realms I must not tread | S |
Come then swift footed let me see you stand | S |
Waiting before me crowned with youth and joy | |
At the next turning Take it from my hand | S |
For I am almost ready now to fall | F3 |
- | |
Something I have achieved yes though I say it | S |
I have not loitered on that fiery way | S |
And if I front the judgment of the wise | Q |
In centuries to come with more of dread | S |
Than my destroyers it is because this work | N |
Will be of use remembered and appraised | S |
When all their hate is dead | S |
I say the work | N |
Not the blind rumour the glory or fame of it | S |
These observations of seven hundred stars | Q |
Are little enough in sight of those great hosts | Q |
Which nightly wheel around us though I hope | |
Yes I still hope in some more generous land | S |
To make my thousand up before I die | N |
Little enough I know a midget's work | N |
The men that follow me with more delicate art | S |
May add their tens of thousands yet my sum | Q4 |
Will save them just that five and twenty years | Q |
Of patience bring them sooner to their goal | |
That kingdom of the law I shall not see | B |
We are on the verge of great discoveries | Q |
I feel them as a dreamer feels the dawn | S |
Before his eyes are opened Many of you | S |
Will see them In that day you will recall | F3 |
This our last meeting at Uraniborg | N |
And how I told you that this work of ours | Q |
Would lead to victories for the coming age | |
The victors may forget us What of that | S |
Theirs be the palms the shouting and the praise | Q |
Ours be the fathers' glory in the sons | Q |
Ours the delight of giving the deep joy | |
Of labouring on the cliff's face all night long | N |
Cutting them foot holes in the solid rock | N |
Whereby they climb so gaily to the heights | Q |
And gaze upon their new discovered worlds | Q |
You will not find me there When you descend | S |
Look for me in the darkness at the foot | S |
Of those high cliffs under the drifted leaves | Q |
That's where we hide at last we pioneers | Q |
For we are very proud and must be sought | S |
Before the world can find us in our graves | Q |
There have been compensations I have seen | S |
In darkness more perhaps than eyes can see | B |
When sunlight blinds them on the mountain tops | Q |
Guessed at a glory past our mortal range | |
And only mine because the night was mine | S |
- | |
Of those three systems of the universe | Q |
The Ptolemaic held by all the schools | Q |
May yet be proven false We yet may find | S |
This earth of ours is not the sovran lord | S |
Of all those wheeling spheres Ourselves have marked | S |
Movements among the planets that forbid | S |
Acceptance of it wholly Some of these | Q |
Are moving round the sun if we can trust | S |
Our years of watching There are stranger dreams | Q |
This radical Copernicus the priest | S |
Of whom I often talked with you declares | Q |
Ail of these movements can be reconciled | S |
If a hypothesis only we should take | N |
The sun itself for centre and assume | Q4 |
That this huge earth so 'stablished so secure | N |
In its foundations is a planet also | S |
And moves around the sun | S |
I cannot think it | S |
This leap of thought is yet too great for me | B |
I have no doubt that Ptolemy was wrong | N |
Some of his planets move around the sun | S |
Copernicus is nearer to the truth | M |
In some things But the planets we have watched | S |
Still wander from the course that he assigned | S |
Therefore my system which includes the best | S |
Of both I hold may yet be proven true | S |
This earth of ours as Jeppe declared one day | S |
So simply that we laughed is 'much too big | N |
To move ' so let it be the centre still | Y4 |
And let the planets move around their sun | S |
But let the sun with all its planets move | |
Around our central earth | M |
This at the least | S |
Accords with all we know and saves mankind | S |
From that enormous plunge into the night | S |
Saves them from voyaging for ten thousand years | Q |
Through boundless darkness without sight of land | S |
Saves them from all that agony of loss | Q |
As one by one the beacon fires of faith | M |
Are drowned in blackness | Q |
I beseech you then | S |
Let me be proven wrong before you take | N |
That darkness lightly If at last you find | S |
The proven facts against me take the plunge | |
Launch out into that darkness Let the lamps | Q |
Of heaven the glowing hearth fires that we knew | S |
Die out behind you while the freshening wind | S |
Blows on your brows and overhead you see | B |
The stars of truth that lead you from your home | Q4 |
- | |
I love this island every little glen | S |
Hazel wood brook and fish pond every bough | S |
And blossom in that garden and I hoped | S |
To die here But it is not chance I know | S |
That sends me wandering through the world again | S |
My use perhaps is ended and the power | N |
That made me breaks me | B |
As he spoke they saw | N |
The tears upon his face He bowed his head | S |
And left them silent in the darkened room | Q4 |
They saw his face no more | N |
The self same hour | N |
Tycho Christine and all their children left | S |
Their island home for even In their ship | |
They took a few of the smaller instruments | Q |
And that most precious record of the stars | Q |
His legacy to the future Into the night | S |
They vanished leaving on the ghostly cliffs | Q |
Only one dark distorted dog like shape | |
To watch them sobbing under its matted hair | N |
Master have you forgotten Jeppe your dwarf | |
- | |
- | |
- | |
- | |
IX | Q |
- | |
- | |
He was a great magician Tycho Brahe | B |
And yet his magic under changing skies | Q |
Could never change his heart or touch the hills | Q |
Of those far countries with the tints of home | Q4 |
And after many a month of wandering | N |
He came to Prague and though with open hands | Q |
Rodolphe received him like an exiled king | N |
A new Aeneas exiled for the truth | M |
For so they called him none could heal the wounds | Q |
That bled within or lull his grief to sleep | |
With that familiar whisper of the waves | Q |
Ebbing and flowing around Uraniborg | N |
- | |
Doggedly still he laboured point by point | S |
Crept on with aching heart and burning brain | S |
Until his table of the stars had reached | S |
The thousand that he hoped to crown his toil | |
But Christine heard him murmuring in the night | S |
The work the work Not to have lived in vain | S |
Into whose hands can I entrust it all | F3 |
I thought to find him standing by the way | S |
Waiting to seize the splendour from my hand | S |
The swift young eyed runner with the torch | |
Let me not live in vain let me not fall | F3 |
Before I yield it to the appointed soul | |
And yet the Power that made and broke him heard | S |
For on a certain day to Tycho came | Q4 |
Another exile guided through the dark | N |
Of Europe by the starlight in his eyes | Q |
Or that invisible hand which guides the world | S |
He asked him as the runner with the torch | |
Alone could ask asked as a natural right | S |
For Tycho's hard won life work those results | Q |
His tables of the stars He gave his name | Q4 |
Almost as one who told him It is I | N |
And yet unconscious that he told a name | Q4 |
Not famous yet though truth had marked him out | S |
Already by his exile as her own | S |
The name of Johann Kepler | N |
It was strange | |
Wrote Kepler not long after for I asked | S |
Unheard of things and yet he gave them to me | B |
As if I were his son When first I saw him | Q4 |
We seemed to have known each other years ago | N |
In some forgotten world I could not guess | Q |
That Tycho Brahe was dying He was quick | N |
Of temper and we quarrelled now and then | S |
Only to find ourselves more closely bound | S |
Than ever I believe that Tycho died | S |
Simply of heartache for his native land | S |
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 | S |
Odd little whispered phrases on his lips | Q |
As if he talked to himself in a kind of dream | Q4 |
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 | Q |
Christine was there She held him in her arms | Q |
I think too that he knew his work was safe | |
An hour before he died he smiled at me | B |
And whispered what he meant I hardly know | N |
Perhaps a broken echo from the past | S |
A fragment of some old familiar thought | S |
And yet I seemed to know It haunts me still | Y4 |
'Come then swift footed let me see you stand | S |
Waiting before me crowned with youth and joy | |
This is the turning Take it from my hand | S |
For I am ready ready now to fall ' | - |
Alfred Noyes
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