DICITVR _interna vi Magnes ferra mouere: Perpetuò nautas dirigere inque viam. Semper enim ſtellam firmè aſpicit ille polærem. Indicat hac horas, nos variéque monet. Mens vtinam in cælum nobis immota maneret, Nec ſubitò dubiis fluctuet illa malis. Pax coëat tandem, Chriſte, vnum claudat ouile, Liſque tui verbi iam dirimatur ope. Da, ſitiens anima excelſas ſic appetat arces: Fontis vt ortiui ceruus anhelus aquas_. In the latter part of his elegiacs Sambucus introduces another subject, and gives a truly religious turn to the device,— “Gather’d one fold, O Christ, let peace abound, Be vanquish’d by thy word, our jarring strife; Then thirsting souls seek towers on heavenly ground, As pants the stag for gushing streams of life.” The magnet’s power alone is kept in view by Whitney (p. 43),— “By vertue hidde, behoulde, the Iron harde, The loadestone drawes, to poynte vnto the starre: Whereby, wee knowe the Seaman keepes his carde, And rightlie shapes, his course to countries farre: And on the pole, dothe euer keepe his eie, And withe the same, his compasse makes agree. Which shewes to vs, our inward vertues shoulde, Still drawe our hartes, althoughe the iron weare: The hauenlie starre, at all times to behoulde, To shape our course, so right while wee bee heare: That Scylla, and Charybdis, wee maie misse, And winne at lengthe, the porte of endlesse blisse.” The pole of heaven itself, rather than the magnetic needle, is in Shakespeare’s dramas the emblem of constancy. Thus in the _Julius Cæsar_ (act iii. sc. 1, l. 58, vol. vii. p. 363), Metellus, Brutus, and Cassius are entreating pardon for Publius Cimber, but Cæsar replies, in words almost every one of which is an enforcement of the saying, “Mens immota manet,”— “I could be well moved, if I were as you; If I could pray to move, prayers would move me: But I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament. The skies are painted with unnumber’d sparks; They are all fire and every one doth shine; But there’s but one in all doth hold his place: So in the world; ’tis furnish’d well with men, And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive; Yet in the number I do know but one That unassailable holds on his rank. Unshak’d of motion: and that I am he, Let me a little show it, even in this; That I was constant Cimber should be banish’d, And constant do remain to keep him so.”