I hope that Tycho knows. I owed so much To Tycho Brahe; for it was he who built The towers from which I hailed those three great laws. How strange and far away it all seems now. The thistles grow upon that little isle Where Tycho's great Uraniborg once was. Yet, for a few sad years, before it fell Into decay and ruin, there was one Who crept about its crumbling corridors, And lit the fire of memory on its hearth."-- Wotton looked quickly up, "I think I have heard Something of that. You mean poor Jeppe, his dwarf. Fynes Moryson, at the Mermaid Inn one night Showed a most curious manuscript, a scrawl On yellow parchment, crusted here and there With sea-salt, or the salt of those thick tears Creatures like Jeppe, the crooked dwarf, could weep. It had been found, clasped in a crooked hand, Under the cliffs of Wheen, a crooked hand That many a time had beckoned to passing ships, Hoping to find some voyager who would take A letter to its master. The sailors laughed And jeered at him, till Jeppe threw stones at them. And now Jeppe, too, was dead, and one who knew Fynes Moryson, had found him, and brought home That curious crooked scrawl. Fynes Englished it Out of its barbarous Danish. Thus it ran: 'Master, have you forgotten Jeppe, your dwarf, Who used to lie beside the big log-fire And feed from your own hand? The hall is dark, There are no voices now,--only the wind And the sea-gulls crying round Uraniborg. I too am crying, Master, even I, Because there is no fire upon the hearth, No light in any window. It is night, And all the faces that I knew are gone. Master, I watched you leaving us. I saw The white sails dwindling into sea-gull's wings, Then melting into foam, and all was dark. I lay among the wild flowers on the cliff And dug my nails into the stiff white chalk And called you, Tycho Brahe. You did not hear; But gulls and jackdaws, wheeling round my head, Mocked me with _Tycho Brahe_, and _Tycho Brahe_!