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.
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