the early evening. The great Shakespeare Winter 

 himself wrote of the Pole Star as immutable, Stars, 

 as the one unpassing, the one fixt and un- 

 deviating star — 



" . . . constant as the Northern Star, 

 Of whose true fixed and lasting quality 

 There is no fellow in the firmament." 



This was, of course, ignorance of what has 

 since been ascertained, and not uninstructed- 

 ness or mere hearsay. Possibly, too, he had 

 in mind rather that apparent unchanging 

 aloofness from the drowning sea -horizon to 

 which Homer alludes in the line beautifully 

 translated ' Arctos, sole star that never bathes 

 in the ocean wave ... of which, no doubt, 

 our great poet had read in the quaint delightful 

 words of Chaucer (rendering Boetius) — 'Ne 

 the sterre y-cleped " the Bere," that enclyneth 

 his ravisshinge courses abouten the soverein 

 heighte of the worlde, ne the same sterre Ursa 

 nis never-mo wasshen in the depe westrene see, 

 ne coveitith nat to deyen his flaumbe in the 

 see of the occian, al-thogh he see other sterres 

 y-plounged in the see.' 



That constellation ' y-cleped the Bere,' how 

 profoundly it has impressed the imagination of 

 all peoples. In every age, in every country, 

 our kindred on lonely lands, on lonely seas, 



293 



