Watchers of the Sky

by Alfred Noyes

What think I? This,—that he has laid his hands
Like Samson on the pillars of our world,
And one more trembling utterance such as this
Will overwhelm us all.
O, Campanella,
You know that I am loyal to our faith,
As Galileo too has always been.
You know that I believe, as he believes,
In the one Catholic Apostolic Church;
Yet there are many times when I could wish
That some blind Samson would indeed tear down
All this proud temporal fabric, made with hands,
And that, once more, we suffered with our Lord,
Were persecuted, crucified with Him.
I tell you, Campanella, on that day
When Galileo faced our Cardinals,
A veil was rent for me. There, in one flash,
I saw the eternal tragedy, transformed
Into new terms. I saw the Christ once more,
Before the court of Pilate. Peter there
Denied Him once again; and, as for me,
Never has all my soul so humbly knelt
To God in Christ, as when that sad old man
Bowed his grey head, and knelt—at seventy years—
To acquiesce, and shake the world with shame.
He shall not strive or cry! Strange, is it not,
How nearly Scheiner—even amidst his hate—
Quoted the Prophets? Do we think this world
So greatly bettered, that the ancient cry,
"Despised, rejected," hails our God no more?

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!" God 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 Masses 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 space
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
Ignobler 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 God?
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 compassionate plea;
The noblest 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 God,
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 pass, received him dead.