Winter seafaring folk of old, the men who voyaged 

 Stars, perilously in small and frail craft without 

 compass and with little knowledge of the 

 mysterious laws of the mysterious forces of 

 earth and sea and heaven, Polaris was the 

 one unchanging skyey beacon, the steadfast 

 unswerving North Star ; and, so, lovingly 

 called by our old Saxon forbears the Scip- 

 steorra, the Ship-Star, and by the Elizabethan 

 seafarers the Lodestar or Pilot-Star, and by 

 the Hebridean fishermen the Home-Star, and 

 by others the Star of the Sea. 



" Constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go. 

 Star of the Pole ! and thou dost see them set. 



Alone in thy cold skies, 

 Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet 

 Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train, 

 Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main. 



On thy unaltering blaze 

 The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost, 



Fixes his steady gaze, 



And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast ; 

 And they who stray in perilous wastes by night 

 Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps 

 right." 



The same spirit which animated Bryant when 

 he wrote these verses in his beautiful * Hymn 

 to the North Star,' or made one of the 

 Gaelic island-poets allude to it as the Star of 

 Compassion, prevailed with these Chaldsean 

 298 



