Or loathing? Will she even come at all?
And, as he wondered, like a light she moved
Before him.
“Is
it you?”—
“Christine!
Christine,”
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.”
Her red lips parted, and between them shone,
The little teeth like white pomegranate seeds.
He saw her frightened eyes.
Then,
with a cry,
Her arms went round him, and her eyelids closed.
Lying against his heart, she set her lips
Against his lips, and claimed him for her own.
IV
One frosty night, as Tycho bent his way
Home to the dark old abbey, he upraised
His eyes, and saw a portent in the sky.
There, in its most familiar patch of blue,
Where Cassiopeia’s five-fold glory burned,
An unknown brilliance quivered, a huge star
Unseen before, a strange new visitant
To heavens unchangeable, as the world believed,
Since the creation.
Could
new stars be born?
Night after night he watched that miracle
Growing and changing colour as it grew;
White at the first, and large as Jupiter;
And, in the third month, yellow, and larger yet;
Red in the fifth month, like Aldebaran,
And larger even than Lyra. In the seventh,
Bluish like Saturn; whence it dulled and dwined
Little by little, till after eight months more
Into the dark abysmal blue of night,
Whence it arose, the wonder died away.
But, while it blazed above him, Tycho brought
Those delicate records of two hundred nights
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
In satin hose and doublet, supple and thin,
Brown-eyed, and bearded with a soft black tuft
Neat as a blackbird’s wing,—a spirit
as keen
And swift as France on all the starry trails
Of thought.
He
saw the deep and simple fire,
The mystery of all genius in those eyes
Above that golden wizard.
Tycho
raised
His wine-cup, brimming—they thought—with
purple dreams;
And bade them drink to their triumphant Queen
Of all the Muses, to their Lady of Light
Urania, and the great new star.
They
laughed,
Thinking the young astrologer’s golden mask
Hid a sardonic jest.
“The
skies are clear,”
Said Tycho Brahe, “and we have eyes to see.
Put out your candles. Open those windows there!”
The colder darkness breathed upon their brows,
And Tycho pointed, into the deep blue night.
There, in their most immutable height of heaven,
In ipso caelo, in the ethereal realm,
Beyond all planets, red as Mars it burned,
