In Babylon, in Babylon, They baked their tablets of the clay; And, year by year, inscribed thereon The dark eclipses of their day; They saw the moving finger write Its _Mene, Mene_, on their sun. A mightier shadow cloaks their light, And clay is clay in Babylon. A shadow moved towards him from the door. Copernicus, with a cry, upraised his head. "The book, I cannot see it, let me feel The lettering on the cover. It is here! Put out the lamp, now. Draw those curtains back, And let me die with starlight on my face. An angel's hand in mine . . . yes; I can say My _nunc dimittis_ now . . . light, and more light In that pure realm whose darkness is our peace." II TYCHO BRAHE I They thought him a magician, Tycho Brahe, Who lived on that strange island in the Sound, Nine miles from Elsinore. His legend reached The Mermaid Inn the year that Shakespeare died. Fynes Moryson had brought his travellers' tales Of Wheen, the heart-shaped isle where Tycho made His great discoveries, and, with Jeppe, his dwarf, And flaxen-haired Christine, the peasant girl, Dreamed his great dreams for five-and-twenty years. For there he lit that lanthorn of the law, Uraniborg; that fortress of the truth, With Pegasus flying above its loftiest tower, While, in its roofs, like wide enchanted eyes Watching, the brightest windows in the world, Opened upon the stars. Nine miles from Elsinore, with all those ghosts, There's magic enough in that! But white-cliffed Wheen, Six miles in girth, with crowds of hunchback waves Crawling all round it, and those moonstruck windows, Held its own magic, too; for Tycho Brahe By his mysterious alchemy of dreams Had so enriched the soil, that when the king Of England wished to buy it, Denmark asked A price too great for any king on earth. "Give us," they said, "in scarlet cardinal's cloth Enough to cover it, and, at every corner, Of every piece, a right rose-noble too; Then all that kings can buy of Wheen is yours. Only," said they, "a merchant bought it once; And, when he came to claim it, goblins flocked All round him, from its forty goblin farms, And mocked him, bidding him take away the stones That he had bought, for nothing else was his." These things were fables. They were also true. They thought him a magician, Tycho Brahe, The astrologer, who wore the mask of gold. Perhaps he was. There's magic in the truth; And only those who find and follow its laws Can work its miracles. Tycho sought the truth From that strange year in boyhood when he heard The great eclipse foretold; and, on the day Appointed, at the very minute even, Beheld the weirdly punctual shadow creep Across the sun, bewildering all the birds With thoughts of evening. Picture him, on that day, The boy at Copenhagen, with his mane Of thick red hair, thrusting his freckled face Out of his upper window, holding the piece