Watchers Of The Sky Part 8

IV

(_Celeste writes to her father in his imprisonment at Siena_.)

Dear father, it will seem a thousand years Until I see you home again and well.

I would not have you doubt that all this time I have prayed for you continually. I saw A copy of your sentence. I was grieved; And yet it gladdened me, for I found a way To be of use, by taking on myself Your penance. Therefore, if you fail in this, If you forget it--and indeed, to save you The trouble of remembering it--your child Will do it for you.

Ah, could she do more!

How willingly would your Celeste endure A straiter prison than she lives in now To 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!" G.o.d fulfilled That wish. You are at Siena; and I now say Would he were at Arcctri.

So perhaps Little by little, angels can be wooed Each day, by some new prayer of mine or yours, To bring you wholly back to me, and save Some few of the flying days that yet remain.

You see, these other Nuns have each their friend, Their patron Saint, their ever near _devoto_, To whom they tell their joys and griefs; but I Have only you, dear father, and if you Were only near me, I could want no more.

Your garden looks as if it missed your love.

The unpruned branches lean against the wall To 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 thieves Have climbed the wall too often for the pears), The crop of peas is good, and only waits Your hand to gather it.

In the dovecote, too, You'll find some plump young pigeons. We must make A feast for your return.

In my small plot, Here at the Convent, better watched than yours, I raised a little harvest. With the price I got for it, I had three Ma.s.ses said For my dear father's sake.

V

_(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 soul Till I should come.

I could not even see Her face.--These useless eyes had spent their power On distant worlds, and lost that last faint look Of love on earth.

I am in the dark, Castelli, Utterly and irreparably blind.

The Universe which once these outworn eyes Enlarged so far beyond its ancient bounds Is henceforth shrunk into that narrow s.p.a.ce Which I myself inhabit.

Yet I found Even 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 me Had 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 me While 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 hand Clasp mine and hold it tighter. Then she died, And left me to my darkness. Could I guess At 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 law And make His will my own!

This much, at least, I know already, that--in some strange way-- His law implies His love; for, failing that All grows discordant, and the primal Power Ign.o.bler than His children.

So I trust One day to find her, waiting for me still, When all things are made new.

I raise this torch Of knowledge. It is one with my right hand, And the dark sap that keeps it burning flows Out of my heart; and yet, for all my faith, It shows me only darkness.

Was I wrong?

Did I forget the subtler truth of Rome And, in my pride, obscure the world's one light?

Did I subordinate to this moving earth Our swiftlier-moving G.o.d?

O, my Celeste, Once, once at least, you knew far more than I; And she is dead, Castelli, she is dead.

VI

(_Viviani, many years later, writes to a friend in England_)

I was his last disciple, as you say I 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 compa.s.sionate plea; _The n.o.blest eye that Nature ever made Is darkened; one so exquisitely dowered, So delicate in power that it beheld More than all other eyes in ages gone And opened the eyes of all that are to come._ But, out of England, even then, there shone The first ethereal promise of light That crowns my master dead. Well I recall That day of days. There was no faintest breath Among his garden cypress-trees. They dreamed Dark, 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 face Knocked at the door of Galileo's house.

His name was Milton.

By the hand of G.o.d, He, the one living soul on earth with power To 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 feet And turning on him those unseeing eyes That had searched heaven and seen so many worlds, Said to him, "You have found me."

Often he told me in those last sad months Of how your grave young island poet brought Peace to him, with the knowledge that, far off, In other lands, the truth he had proclaimed Was gathering power.

Soon after, death unlocked His prison, and the city that he loved, Florence, his town of flowers, whose gates in life He was forbid to pa.s.s, received him dead.

You write to me from England, that his name Is 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 grave Where hate denied him even an epitaph; And I have seen, slowly and silently, His purer fame arising, like a moon In marble on the twilight of those aisles At Santa Croce, where the dread decree Was read against him.

Now, against two wrongs, Let me defend two victims: first, the Church Whom many have vilified for my master's doom; And second, Galileo, whom they reproach Because they think that in his blind old age He might with one great eagle's glance have cowed His judges, played the hero, raised his hands Above his head, and posturing like a mummer Cried (as one empty rumour now declares) After his recantation--_yet, it moves_!

Out of this wild confusion, fourfold wrongs Are 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 smile With which, like Socrates, he answered fools, They would not, in the name of Christ, have mixed This hemlock in his chalice.

O pitiful Pitiful human hearts that must deny Their own unfolding heavens, for one light word Twisted by whispering malice.

Did he mean Simplicio, in his dialogues, for the Pope?

Doubtful enough--the name was borrowed straight From older dialogues.

If he gave one thought Of Urban's to Simplicio--you know well How 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 saints Are aroused by ridicule to most human wrath.

Urban was once his friend. This hint of ours Kills all of that. And so we mortals close The doors of Love and Knowledge on the world.

And so, for many an age, the name of Christ Has been misused by man to mask man's hate.

How should the Church escape, then? I who loved My master, know he had no truer friend Than 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 light Would charge the sun with darkness, and accuse This dome of sky for all the blood-red wrongs That men commit beneath it. Art and song That found her once in Europe their sole shrine And sanctuary absolve her from that stain.

But there's this other charge against my friend, And master, Galileo. It is brought By friends, made sharper by their pity and grief, The charge that he refused his martyrdom And so denied his own high faith.

Whose faith,-- His friends', his Protestant followers', or his own?

Faced by the torture, that sublime old man Was still a faithful Catholic, and his thought Plunged deeper than his Protestant followers knew.

His aim was not to strike a blow at Rome But to confound his enemies. He believed As humbly as Castelli or Celeste That there is nothing absolute but that Power With which his Church confronted him. To this He bowed his head, acknowledging that his light Was darkness; but affirming, all the more, That Ptolemy's light was even darker yet.

Read your own Protestant Milton, who derived His mighty argument from my master's lips: _"Whether the sun predominant in heaven Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun; Leave them to G.o.d above; Him serve and fear."_ Just as in boyhood, when my master watched The swinging lamp in the cathedral there At Pisa; and, by one finger on his pulse, Found that, although the great bronze miracle swung Through ever-shortening s.p.a.ces, yet it moved More slowly, and so still swung in equal times; He straight devised another boon to man, Those pulse-clocks which by many a fevered bed Our doctors use; dreamed of that timepiece, too, Whose punctual swinging pendulum on earth Measures the starry periods, and to-day Talks peacefully to children by the fire Like an old grandad full of ancient tales, Remembering endless ages, and foretelling Eternities to come; but, all the while There, in the dim cathedral, he knew well, That dreaming youngster, with his tawny mane Of red-gold hair, and deep ethereal eyes, What odorous clouds of incense round him rose; Was conscious in the dimness, of great throngs Kneeling around him; shared in his own heart The music and the silence and the cry, _O, salutaris hostia!_--so now, There was no mortal conflict in his mind Between 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 less Were comprehended, like the swinging lamp, Within that great cathedral of his soul.

Often he bade me, in that desolate house _Il Giojello_, of old a jewel of light, Read to him one sad letter, till he knew The most of it by heart, and while he walked His garden, leaning on my arm, at times I 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 fruit I 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 mind Our Lord's own bitter Pa.s.sion. Its green leaves Image the hope that through His Pa.s.sion we, After this winter of our mortal life, May find the beauty of an eternal spring In heaven."

Praise me the martyr, out of whose agonies Some great new hope is born, but not the fool Who starves his heart to prove what eyes can see And intellect confirm throughout the world.

Why must he follow the idiot schoolboy code, Torture his soul to reinforce the sight Of those that closed their eyes and would not see.

To your own men of science, fifty turns Of the thumbscrew would not prove that earth revolved.

Call it Italian subtlety if you will, I say his intricate cause could not be won By blind heroics. Much that his enemies challenged Was not yet wholly proven, though his mind Had leapt to a certainty. He must leave the rest To those that should come after, swift and young,-- Those runners with the torch for whom he longed As his deliverers. Had he chosen death Before his hour, his proofs had been obscured For many a year. His respite gave him time To push new p.a.w.ns out, in the blindfold play Of those last months, and checkmate, not the Church But those that hid behind her. He believed His truth was all harmonious with her own.

How could he choose between them? Must he die To affirm a discord that himself denied?

On many a point, he was less sure than we: But surer far of much that we forget The movements that he saw he could but judge By some fixed point in s.p.a.ce. He chose the sun.

Could this be absolute? Could he then be sure That this great sun did not with all its worlds Move round a deeper centre? What became Of your Copernicus then? Could he be sure Of any unchanging centre, whence to judge This myriad-marching universe, but one-- The absolute throne of G.o.d.

Affirming this Eternal Rock, his own uncertainties Became more certain, and although his lips Breathed not a syllable of it, though he stood Silent as earth that also seemed so still, The very silence thundered, _yet it moves_!

He held to what he knew, secured his work Through 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 gained The 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 horns With sun-fire. Many a pure immortal phrase In his own work, as I have pondered it, Lived first upon the lips of him whose eyes Were darkened first,--in whom, too, Milton found That 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 air When, in the year of Galileo's death, Newton, the mightiest of the sons of light, Was born to lift the splendour of this torch And carry it, as I heard that Tycho said Long 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."