St. Augustine's Prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary?

 In my Facebook feed, I came across the following prayer of Saint Augustine to Mary:

O blessed Virgin Mary, who can worthily repay thee thy just dues of praise and thanksgiving, thou who by the wondrous assent of thy will didst rescue a fallen world? What songs of praise can our weak human nature recite in thy honor, since it is by thy intervention alone that it has found the way to restoration. Accept, then, such poor thanks as we have here to offer, though they be unequal to thy merits; and receiving our vows, obtain by thy prayers the remission of our offenses. Carry thou our prayers within the sanctuary of the heavenly audience,and bring forth from it the antidote of our reconciliation. May the sins we bring before Almighty God through thee, become pardonable through thee; may what we ask for with sure confidence, through thee be granted. Take our offering, grant us our requests, obtain pardon for what we fear, for thou art the sole hope of sinners. Through thee we hope for the remission of our sins, and in thee, O blessed Lady, is our hope of reward. Holy Mary, succour the miserable, help the fainthearted, comfort the sorrowful, pray for thy people, plead for the clergy, intercede for all women consecrated to God; may all who keep thy holy commemoration feel now thy help and protection. Be thou ever ready to assist us when we pray, and bring back to us the answers to our prayers. Make it thy continual care to pray for the people of God, thou who, blessed by God, didst merit to bear the Redeemer of the world, who liveth and reigneth, world without end. Amen.

I had never heard that Augustine prayed to Mary, so this provoked my attention. This prayer of Augustine's to Mary is found on various webpages... typically undocumented. For instance, the website, Learn Religions attributes the prayer to Augustine and uses it to illustrate "both Christian reverence for the Mother of God and the proper understanding of intercessory prayer... We pray to the Blessed Virgin so that she might present our prayers to God and obtain forgiveness from Him for our sins." This website claims "Our content is rigorously researched and written by writers who are experts in their fields." We'll see that they dropped the ball, there's no proof Augustine penned these words. In fact, it's been established who wrote the prayer, and it was not Augustine.

Documentation
I checked a number of links citing the prayer attributing it to Augustine without finding any meaningful documentation. But various clues did arise. Allegedly, the prayer comes with significant papal approval and an indulgence of fifty days!

Our Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX., at the prayer of several devout persons, vouchsafed to grant, by a Rescript of the Segretaria of the Memorials, dated May 19, 1854 -

The indulgence of fifty days, every time that, with contrite heart, the following prayer is said to the most holy Virgin, extracted from the eighteenth Sermon of St. Augustine, De Sanctis.

This source also provides a Latin text demonstrating the prayer has circulated as attributed to Augustine for a long time. 

However, this webpage definitively states the following: 

Written by Bishop Fulbert of Chartres (ca 951-ca 1029), it appears in his Sermo IX, De Annuntiatione Dominica. The prayer is sometimes attributed to St. Augustine, Book 10, Sermon 18, de Sanctis, since Bishop Fulbert's sermon appeared in the collected works of St. Augustine at one time. However, it is now known that the sermon is not Augustine's, but Bishop Fulbert's.

Conclusion
Textual criticism once again to the rescue! Augustine did not write this prayer. It would be interesting to know when the "collected works of St. Augustine" incorrectly attributed the prayer to Augustine was published. It would also be interesting to have documentation in regard to the fifty-day indulgente granted by Pius IX for the recitation of this prayer and if he specifically mentions Augustine. That would actually be sadly humorous if true, that the pope granted an eternal fifty-day indulgence based on a mis-attributed prayer. 

A general question though still remains unanswered: did Augustine pray to Mary? A simple Google A.I. search says,

Yes, St. Augustine prayed to the Virgin Mary, asking for her intercession to help him find forgiveness and grace, viewing her as a powerful advocate to present his prayers to God, a practice consistent with early Christian reverence for saints. He expressed deep devotion, believing she, as the Mother of God, could help his prayers reach God and secure pardon for his sins, and his writings highlight her unique role and holiness, influencing later Marian traditions.

The links Google provides though are not helpful. One older source states of Augustine:

Invocation of Angels and Saints.‡‡ On this we have thirteen passages quoted; all, save one, refer to the departed praying for those on earth. Even in this view Augustine expresses a doubt. "The question is indeed a great one, not to be discussed at present whether, or how far, or in what way, the spirits of the dead know the things which happen in our regard." That is a very different question from praying to them for their help and assistance, and our pleading their supposed superabundant merits on our behalf. True, the compilers cite the case alleged to be recorded by Augustine (p. 377), of " a certain woman, who seeing that her child was dead and irreparably lost," ran with the dead body to a place dedicated to "the blessed Martyr Stephen, and began demanding her son from him," and to "restore her son." And accordingly we are told that her son came to life! Well! if such was the genuine production of Augustine, all we can add is, that it is very different from his other sentiments expressed on the subject of prayers; and I venture to assert that no lay Roman Catholic of the present day will believe that such a circumstance ever took place. Modern Romanists under similar circumstances, if they offered up any prayer at all, would invoke the Virgin Mary, not Stephen!

According to this old author, Augustine did not invoke Mary in prayer.