The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Copernicus died at Fraemberg, a small city at the mouth of the Vistula, A.D. 1543, and, as has been said, though the fact is not certain, the day after he received the first printed copy of that great work, dedicated to Pope Paul III., which embodied his astronomical discoveries, and substituted the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of the universe. That work he had withheld from publication for thirty-six years, fearing lest the conclusions he had arrived at might possibly prove unsound scientifically, and, in that case, till confuted, be dangerous to Faith. These misgivings he had discarded on re-examining the grounds of his philosophy.

Hail, silent, chaste, and ever sacred stars!
Ye bind my life in one! I well remember
When first your glory pierced my youthful heart:
'Twas Christmas Eve near midnight. From a boat
I watched you long; then, rowing, faced the deep:
Above the storm-loved cliff of Elsinore
Sworded Orion high and higher rose
With brightening belt. The city clocks struck twelve:
Straight from the countless towers rang out their chimes
Hailing the Babe new-born. Along the sea
Vibration waved; and in its depth the stars
Danced as they flashed answering that rapturous hymn
‘Glory to God on high and peace on earth.’
I shall not long behold them, saith my leech:
He errs: I suffer little.

On my bed
Yon lies my tome—one man's bequest to men.
Is the gift good? From youth to age I toiled

386

A gleaner in the starry harvest field:
Lo, there one gathered sheaf—
I think I laboured with a stainless aim
If scarce a single aim. In ancient times
Pythagoras had gleams of this high lore:
Let coming ages stamp his name upon it;
I count it his, not mine.

My earlier book
In substance was as this. But thus I mused;
Christ's simple ones may take offence and cry
‘'Tis written, “God hath made the earth so strong
Nothing can move it;” Science this avers
It moves around the sun.’ Such questioner
Deserves all reverence. Faith is more than Science:
But 'twixt the interpretation and the text
Lies space world-wide. That text meant this—no more—
So solid is the earth concussion none,
Though mountains fell, can shake it. Here is nought
Of motion round the sun. Solidity
To such advance condition were, not hindrance:
Far flies the pebble forward flung; the flower
Drops at the flinger's foot.

Again I mused;
The Truth of Nature with the Truth Revealed
Accords perforce; not so the illusive gloss
By Nature's scholiasts forced on Nature's page:
That gloss of Ptolemy's made great Nature lie
A thousand years and more. Through countless errors
Thus only, Science gropes her way to Truth.
May I not err like Ptolemy? Distrustful
I hid my book for thirty years and six
Cross-questioning with fresh inquest patient skies,
And found there nothing that arraigned my lore

387

Much that confirmed it. From the Minster tower,
Canon that time at Warnia though unworthy,
I made me charts of angle, sine, and arc:—
Those vigils left my feet so numbed at morn
They scarce could find the altar-step, my hands
Scarce lift the chalice! Day by day I prayed
With adjuration added, ‘If, my God,
Thou seest my pride suborn my faculties
Place me a witless one among thy witless
Who beg beneath church porches.’ Likewise I sued
The poor beside whose beds I ministered—
For their sake I had learned the healing craft—
To fence me with their prayers.

Discovered Truths
I blabbed not to the crowd, but whispered them
To the wary—wise, and these alone. In these
I found amazement less than I presaged:
There seemed a leaning in the minds of men,
As when a leaning cornfield shews the wind,
To such results as in Bologna's schools
Made way when there I dwelt. I note this day
The ecclesiastics of the higher sort
Are with me more than those whose lore is Nature;
These hate the foot that spurns prescription's fence;
Not so my friend, the bishop of old Kulm;
He cries, ‘Go forward!’ Thirty years ago
Milan's famed painter—he of the ‘Last Supper’—
Whispered me thus, ‘The earth goes round the sun.’
There are whose guess is prophecy.

This night
I make election: twofold choice is mine;
The first, to hurl this book on yonder sea;
The last, to fling it on a flood more vast
And fluctuating more—the mind of man

388

Crying, ‘Fare forth and take what God shall send!’
One doubt alone remains; no text it touches
But dangers from within. In days gone by
Near me a youth beside a casement stood,
The sea not distant and a heaven all stars:
Christ's Advent was our theme. He cried, ‘Look forth!
Yon skies confute the old Faith! When Earth was young
Wistful as lovers, credulous as children,
Men deemed our Earth the centre of the world,
The stars its lackeys and its torch-bearers.
Such science is foredoomed: mankind will learn
This sphere is not God's ocean but one drop
Showered from its spray. Came God from heaven for that?
Speak no more words!’

That was a tragedy!
A mood may pass; yet moods have murdered souls.
It proved not thus with him.

I looked again:
That face was as an angel's: from his brow
The cloud had passed. Reverent, I spake no word:
Later, albeit at times such moods recurred,
That man was helpful to a nation's soul:
In death he held the Faith.

This Earth too small
For Love Divine! Is God not Infinite?
If so, His Love is infinite. Too small!
One famished babe meets pity more from man
Oft than an army slain! Too small for Love!
Was Earth too small to be by God created?
Why then too small to be redeemed?

The sense

389

Sees greatness only in the sensuous greatness:
Science in that sees little: Faith sees nought:
The small, the vast, are tricks of earthly vision:
To God, that Omnipresent All-in-Each,
Nothing is small, is far.

More late I knew
A hoary man dim-eyed with restless hands
A zealot barbed with jibe and scoff still launched
At priest and kings and holy womanhood:
One night descending from my tower he spake;
‘A God, and God incarnate but for man,
That reasoning beast—and all yon glittering orbs
In cold obstruction left!’

Diverse those twain!
That youth, though dazzled by the starry vastness
And thus despising earth, had awe for God:
That grey-haired fool believed in matter only.
Compassion for those starry races robbed
By earth, like Esau of their birthright just,
Was pretext. They that know not of a God
How know they that the stars have habitants?
'Tis Faith and Hope that spread delighted hands
To such belief? no formal proof attests it.
Concede them peopled; can the sophist prove
Their habitants are fallen, and need Redemption?
Who told him next that no redeeming foot
Has trod those spheres? That fresh assumption granted
What then? Is not the Universe a whole?
Doth not the sunbeam herald from the sun
Gladden the violet's bosom? Moons uplift
The tides: remotest stars lead home the lost:
Judæa was one country, one alone:
Not less Who died there died for all. The Cross

390

Brought help to buried nations: Time opposed
No bar to Love: why then should Space oppose one?
We know not what Time is nor what is Space;—
Why dream that bonds like theirs can bind the Unbounded?
If Earth be small likelier it seems that Love
Compassionate most and condescending most
To Sorrow's nadir depths, should choose that Earth
For Love's chief triumph, missioning thence her gift
Even to the utmost zenith!

To the Soul
Far more than to the intellect of man
I deemed the gift vouchsafed when on me first
This new-born Science dawned. I said, ‘Long since
We call God infinite: what means that term?
A boy since childhood walled in one small field
Could answer nothing. He who looks on skies
Ablaze with stars, not hand-maids poor of earth
But known for worlds of measureless bulk and swiftness,
Has mounted to another grade of spirit,
Proceeded man. The stars do this for man;
They make Infinitude imaginable:
God, by our instincts felt as infinite,
When known becomes such to our total being,
Mind, spirit, heart, and soul. The greater Theist
Should make the greater Christian.

True it is
Best gift may come too soon. No marvel this:
The earth was shaped for myriad forms of greatness
As Freedom, Genius, Beauty, Science, Art,
Some extant, some to be. Such forms of greatness
Are, through God's will, greatness conditional:
Where Christ is greatest these are great; elsewhere

391

Great only to betray. Sweetly and sagely
In order grave the Maker of all Worlds
Still modulates the rhythm of human progress;
His Angels on whose song the seasons float
Keep measured cadence: all good things keep time
Lest Good should strangle Better. Aristotle
Aspired like me to base on fact and proof
Nature's philosophy. Fate said him nay:
That Fate was kindness hidden—
Material Knowledge, man's too soon, perchance
Had slain unborn man's spiritual knowledge.
The natural science of great Aristotle
Died young: his logic lived and helped God's Church
To map her Christian Science.

Ancient Thought
And Christian Faith, opposed in much beside,
Held Man in reverence, each. Much came of that:
Matter dethroned, a place remained for spirit:
Old Grecian song called Man creation's lord;
The Christian Creed named him his Maker's Image;
One was a humble reverence; one a proud:
Science that day perchance had made men prouder:
The Ptolemaic scheme had place and use
Till Christian Faith conquering the earth had crowned it:
The arch complete its centering is removed:
That Faith which franchised first the Soul of man
Franchises next his Mind.

Another knowledge
Man's appanage now, was snatched awhile from men,
The Lore of antique ages said or sung:
It rolled, a river through the Athenian vales;
It sank, as though by miracle, in earth;
A fount unsealed by hand divine, it leaps

392

Once more against the sun.

That strange new birth
Had place when first I trod Italian soil:
Men spake of bards to Dante's self unknown,
To Francis, Bernard, Dominic, Aquinas:
Great Albert knew them not. The oracles
Of lying gods were dumb: but dumb not less
The sage Greek poets, annalists, orators,
For God had uttered voice and leaned from heaven
Waiting the earth's response. The air was mute,
Mute for the Saviour God had breathed it late,
Left it His latest sigh. The ages passed:
Alone were Apostolic voices heard;
Then Fathers of the Church; the Schoolmen last.
Clamour surceased: the ‘Credo’ for that cause
Was plainlier heard. The winds and waves had fallen;
And there was a great calm—stillness of spirit
At heart of storm extern. At last God's Truth
Had built o'er earth the kingdom of God's Peace:
The penance-time had passed: Greece spake once more:
What was that speech but prophecy fulfilled
‘The heathen shall become thy heritage?’
Euphrates and Ilissus flow again;
The grey waste flowers. New greatness nears us now
Shall not God's angels reap two harvest fields
First Letters; Science next?

Severance is needful,
Yea, needfuller yet will prove as ages pass.
The nobler songs of Greece divulged in verse
Such Truths as Nature had retained though fallen,
Man's heart had prized. Ay, but with these there mixed
Music debasing. Christendom this day

393

Confronts two gifts, and trials likewise twain:
She must become the mother of great Nations;
Each Nation with the years will breed its Book,
Its Bible uninspired. But if these Books
Should prove but sorcerers' juggling wares, these prophets
Stand up false prophets and their word a lie,
A Voice from those two Books of Greece and Rome
Will sound their sentence, crying; ‘In the night
We sang sweet songs the auguries of dawn;
We sang the Mother-land, the household loves,
The all-reverend eld, the virgin sanctitude,
The stranger's Right, the altar reared to Pity;—
Ye, 'mid the noontide glories turned to black,
Outshamed our worst with worse.’

Should that voice peal,
Woe to the Nations which have sinned that sin!
Truth's golden bowl will at the cistern break,
Song's daughters be brought low.

For these two gifts,
The Science new, the Old Lore revived, the time
Seems opportune alike. The earth finds rest:
That Rome which warred on Christ is judged; has vanished;
Those direful heresies of three centuries more,
The hordes barbaric, and, barbaric thrice,
Those Christian Emperors vexing still Christ's Church:—
The Antipopes are gone; the Arabian prophet
Scowls at the West in vain. Yet who can tell
If in some age, remote or near, a cloud
Blacker than aught that shook the olden world
May rush not from clear skies? That hour upon us
‘Quieta non movere’ may become

394

Wisdom's sum total; to repress not spur
Progressive thought the hour's necessity;
Against their will the truthfullest spirits may cry,
‘Better to wait than launch the bark of knowledge
There when the breakers roar!’

Work on and fear not!
Work, and in hope, though sin may cheat that hope:
Work, knowing this, that, when God's lesser gifts
Are mocked by mortals, God into that urn
Which stands for aye gift-laden by His throne
Thrusts deeplier yet His hand and upward draws
His last—then chief—of mercies—Retribution.
Should man abusing use this knowledge vast
Not for relieving of God's suffering poor
But doubling of their burthens; not for peace
But keener sharpening of war's battle-axe,
And viler solace of the idle and rich,
God will to such redouble pain for sin.
Such lot may lie before us. This is sure
That, as colossal Sanctity walks oft
In humblest vales, not less a pigmy race
May strut on mountains. If from heights of science
Men should look forth o'er worlds on worlds unguessed
And find therein no witness to their God,
Nought but Man's Image chaunting hymns to Man,
‘Great is thy wisdom, Man, and strong thy hand,’
God will repay the madness of that boast
With madness guilty less—a brain imbecile.
Races there live, once sage and brave, that now
Know not to light a fire! If impious men
Press round Truth's gate with Intellect's fleshlier lust—
For what is Godless Intellect but fleshly?—

395

Sudden a glacial wind shall issue forth
And strike those base ones blind!

Should that day come
Let no man cease from hope. Intensest ill
Breeds good intensest. For the sons of God
That knowledge won by bad men will survive.
If fleets one day should pass the storm in swiftness
That Cross which lights their prow will reach but sooner
The lands that sit in night. If Empires new
Wage war on Faith each drop of martyr blood
Will sow once more Faith's harvest. Virgin spirits
Raised from a child-like to an angel pureness,
Will walk in Chastity's sublimer flame;
God's earthquake shake men to their fitting places,
True men and false the sons of light and night,
No more, as now, confused. God's Church will make
Since, though she errs not yet her best may err,
For sins of good men dead due expiation,
Then for her second triumph claim as site
A planet's, not an empire's girth. True Kings
Will fence their thrones with freemen not with serfs;
True priests by serving rule. The Tree of Life
First made our spirits food, that Tree which slew us
Will prove her sister. Knowledge then will clasp
Supremacy o'er matter, earth's fruition
Not by the plucking of a fruit forbidden
But by the valorous exercise austere
Of faculties, God's gift.

‘Lift up your heads,
Ye everlasting gates,’ the Psalmist sang,
‘So shall the King of Glory enter in.’
Lives there who doubts that when the Starry Gates

396

Lift up their heads like minster porches vast
At feasts before a marvelling nation's eyes
And shew, beyond, the universe of God
Lives there who doubts that, entering there, man's mind
Must see before it far a God Who enters
Flashing from star to star? Lives there who doubts
That those new heavens beyond all hope distent
Must sound their Maker's praise? Religion's self
That day shall wear an ampler crown; all Truths
Though constellated in the Church's Creed
Yet dim this day because man's mind is dim,
Perforce dilating as man's mind dilates
O'er us must hang, a new Theology,
Our own yet nobler even as midnight heavens
Through crystal ether kenned more sharply shine
Than when mist veiled the stars! Let others doubt—
My choice is made.

The stars! Once more they greet me!
Thanks to the wind that blows yon casement back;
'Tis cold; but vigils old have taught me patience.
Is this the last time, O ye stars? Not so—
'Tis not the death-chill yet. Those northern heavens
Yield me once more that Northern Sign long loved;
Yon sea is still its glass, though many a star
Faints now in broader beams. Yon winter moon
Has changed this cell thick-walled and ofttimes dim
Into a silver tent. O light, light, light,
How great thou art! Thou only, free of space,
Bindest the universe of God in one:
Matter, methinks, in thee is changed to spirit:—
What if our bodies, death subdued, shall rise

397

All light—compact of light!

I had forgotten
Good Cardinal Schomberg's missive: here it lies:
I read it three weeks since. ‘The Holy Father
Wills that your labours stand divulged to man;
Wills likewise that his name should grace your tome
As dedicate to him.’ I read in haste:
‘His Name,’—that such high grace should 'scape me thus
Argues, I think, some failure of my powers.
So be it! Their task is wrought.

The tide descends,
The caves send forth anew those hoarse sea-thunders
Lulled when full flood satiates their echoing roofs.
They tell me this, that God, their God, hath spoken
And the great deep obeys. That deep forsakes
The happy coasts where fishers spread their nets,
The fair green slopes with snowy flocks bespread,
The hamlets red each morn with cloaks of girls
And loud with shouting children. Forth he fares
To solitudes of ocean waste and wide
Cheered by that light he loves. I too obey:
I too am called to face the Infinite,
Leaving familiar things and faces dear
Of friends and tomes forth leaning from yon wall:
Me too the Uncreated Light shall greet
When cleansed to bear it. O, how sweet was life!
How sweeter must have been had I been worthy—
Grant me Thy Beatific Vision, Lord:
Then shall those eyes star-wearied see and live!

February 1889.

University of Virginia Library

THE DEATH OF COPERNICUS.