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;