My latest prayer Receive, O deity, if still with me Thou bidest, thus.

May it be mine again, Conquered, with hostile Caesar on my tracks To find a Lesbos where to enter in And whence to part, unhindered." In the boat He placed his spouse: while from the shore arose Such lamentation, and such hands were raised In ire against the gods, that thou had'st deemed All left their kin for exile, and their homes.
And though for Magnus grieving in his fall Yet for Cornelia chiefly did they mourn Long since their gentle guest.

For her had wept The Lesbian matrons had she left to join A victor husband: for she won their love, By kindly modesty and gracious mien, Ere yet her lord was conquered, while as yet Their fortunes stood.
Now slowly to the deep Sank fiery Titan; but not yet to those He sought (if such there be), was shown his orb, Though veiled from those he quitted.

Magnus' mind, Anxious with waking cares, sought through the kings His subjects, and the cities leagued with Rome In faith, and through the pathless tracts that lie Beyond the southern bounds: until the toil Of sorrowing thought upon the past, and dread Of that which might be, made him cast afar His wavering doubts, and from the captain seek Some counsel on the heavens; how by the sky He marked his track upon the deep; what star Guided the path to Syria, and what points Found in the Wain would pilot him aright To shores of Libya.

But thus replied The well-skilled watcher of the silent skies: "Not by the constellations moving ever Across the heavens do we guide our barks; For that were perilous; but by that star (2) Which never sinks nor dips below the wave, Girt by the glittering groups men call the Bears.
When stands the pole-star clear before the mast, Then to the Bosphorus look we, and the main Which carves the coast of Scythia.