Meanwhile, King Ceyx, still
perturbed by these strange things—his brother’s fate
and then the singular events of late—
wants to consult a sacred oracle; for oracles
can comfort men in trouble.
He wants to leave for Clarus (on that isle
Apollo has a shrine): the sanctuary
in Delphi was—just then—impossible
to reach, for under impious Phorbas,
the Phlegyans had sacked the sacred city.
But you, Alcyone, his trusted wife—
it is to you that Ceyx first confides
his plan. A sudden chill invades your bones;
your face grows pale as boxwood; and your cheeks
are wet with tears. Three times she tries to speak;
three times her face is tear-streaked as she weeps.
At last, though sobs still interrupt her plea,
she utters her affectionate entreaty:
“What fault of mine has turned your mind awry?
Your care for me was once the first of things—
where has that gone? My dearest one, are we
so distant now that you can tranquilly
leave your Alcyone alone? Long journeys—
do those intrigue you now? When I am far,
am I more dear to you? But I should hope
that you will go by way of land. At least—
Latin [406–25]
although I grieve—I will not have such need
to fear: I’ll suffer but without despair.
It is the sea that haunts me: there is terror
in the drear image of its endless waters.
Lately, I saw some planks along the beach,
the shattered remnants of a wreck at sea;
and often I’ve seen tombs that bore a name,
although, within those tombs, nobody lay.
And do not let illusions cozen you:
the father of your wife may be the son
of Hippotas—yes, Aeolus is one
who holds the winds as prisoner and may,
whenever he so wills it, calm the waves.
But once the winds, unleashed, have reached the deep,
they can be curbed no more; there is no land,
there is no tract of water to withstand
their power: no thing then is safe from them.
They can harass the highest clouds of heaven;
and when contending winds collide, impact,
wind batters wind, and then red lightnings flash.
(As a child, I often saw those winds within
my father’s house—I know them—and be sure
the more I know of them, the more I fear.)
But if no plea of mine can change your plan,
if you in truth must leave, then take me, too,
dear husband; let me journey out with you.
The storms will batter both of us, and I
will only have to fear what meets my eyes.
As one, we shall endure whatever comes;
as one, we’ll sail the sea’s immensity!”
The words and tears of Aeolus’ dear daughter
have deeply moved the son of Lucifer:
he feels in full the fire of love for her.
And yet he won’t renounce his voyage out
by sea, nor would he have Alcyone
share any of the dangers he might meet.
He tries, with many suasive words, to ease
Latin [425–48]
her frightened heart. But she cannot agree.
At that, he adds these words, the only pledge
that calms his loving wife, wins her consent:
“There’s no delay that won’t seem long to us;
yet by my father’s radiant fires, I promise
that if my fate permits me to return,
you are to see me home again before
the moon has twice filled all of her white orb.”
Alcyone, on hearing Ceyx’ vow,
is filled with hope that he’ll return; and now
he tells his men to launch his ship at once,
with proper gear to meet its every need.
When she has seen that done, Alcyone—
as if she could foresee what is to come—
shudders anew, sheds tears, embraces him,
and, desperate, at last with sad voice says
farewell, then falls as a dead body falls.
And now, though Ceyx would have liked to linger,
his keen young men are quick to cleave the water;
aligned in double rows, with measured strokes,
back to their sturdy chests they draw their oars.
Alcyone lifts tearful eyes: she sees
her husband standing at the curving stem;
he signals first; with waving hand he greets
his wife, and she replies with other signs.
And when the shore is long since left behind,
and faces can’t be seen by loving eyes,
she scans the sea as best she can, until
the ship recedes from sight. And when it fades,
her eyes, still watchful, seek the far-off sail
that flutters at the summit of the mast.
When even that is gone, she hurries back
in desperation, to her room—and there
she throws herself upon the empty bed.
The room, the bed renew her drear lament;
she thinks upon the part of her that left.
Latin [448–73]
The ship had left the harbor, and the wind
was rattling through the rigging. They drew in
their oars and let them dangle at shipside;
they ran the yard high up the mast; to catch
each breath of quickening breeze, all sails were spread.
By now the ship had traveled slightly less
or one might say, no more—then half her course:
the land they’d left and land they headed toward
were both far off. Night fell; the rough seas swelled
with foaming whitecaps, Eurus’ gusting force
grew ominous. “Haul down the yard at once,”
the captain shouted; “tight reef all the sails!”
He shouted, but his sharp command is drowned
by blustering winds: the storm advances now—
no human voice is heard; the surge is loud.
But even so, some sailors, on their own,
now stow the oars, some seal up the oar holes;
some reef the sails while others now bail out
the waters flooding in: they pour the sea
into the sea—all this, confusedly.
The storm redoubles force; the winds wage war
ferociously; they chum the angry waters.
The captain, too, is fearful; even he,
despite his skill, is helpless in these seas.
And there is uproar everywhere: the howls
of men, the creaking rigging, and the roar
of wave on wave, and thunder from the sky.
The surge is mountainous; it seems to rise
to heaven, where it sprays the clouds with spume;
now, sweeping up the bottom of the sea,
the waves take on the tawny hue of sand;
and now they are as black as waves of Styx;
and then, from time to time, as they spread out,
the waves are white with the resounding foam.
And like the surge, the ship of Ceyx, too,
is in the grip of chance, of sudden shifts;
now lifted high, as from a mountain peak,
she seems to look below, into the deep
Latin [474–504]
of valleys, lowest Acheron’s abyss;
now, driven down, hemmed in by surge that twists,
from pools as deep as Styx—on distant skies
so far above—she seems to set her sights.
Huge combers often crash against her sides,
as battering rams or catapults can strike
a savaged citadel with massive thuds.
And even as fierce lions gain new force
just when they launch their final, frantic rush
against poised spears, so, when contending gusts
lash hard, the waters charge in wild assault
against the hull and tower over it.
The wedges now give way; the hull springs leaks;
the surge has stripped the covering of pitch,
and gaping seams let fatal waves pour in.
The clouds have burst; great torrents now cascade;
one would have thought that all the skies had fallen
into the sea, while swollen waves had risen
into the sky. The downpour soaks the sails,
and all the waters—sea’s and heaven’s—mingle.
Not one star shines. The night is doubly dark—
with its own shades and shadows of the storm;
and yet, from time to time, the dark is torn
by flashing lightning bolts; and one can watch
the waves glow red beneath the lightning’s glare—
and see just how those waves invade the hull
(by now, they don’t sweep through the seams but leap
directly). As an eager soldier seeks
to scale the walls of a beleaguered city
and, after failing many times, succeeds
at last and, all aflame with love of fame,
leaps over that great wall and finds himself
the only one among a thousand men:
just so, when some nine waves have tried to leap
across the hull’s high sides, it is the tenth
that, surging even more ferociously,
assaults the weary hull without a let
until its overwhelming fury lifts
Latin [504–32]
that wave across the sides on to the deck—
the wave has won; the hull is overcome.
And thus, in this invasion of the ship,
while one part of the sea is still without,
the other part already is within—
a time of terror, such as grips a town
when some assail the ramparts from without,
while other fighters rage inside the walls.
Both skill and courage fail; no thing avails;
each wave is like another headlong death.
Some cannot check their tears, and some are mute.
One sailor cries that those indeed are blessed
who die on land and earn a burial;
another prays and begs the gods to help,
stretching his arms—in vain—up toward the sky,
though there is nothing he can see on high.
One calls to mind his brothers and his parents;
another fastens on his house, his children;
and each recalls what he has left behind.
But Ceyx thinks of his Alcyone;
it’s she alone for whom he longs—and yet
he’s happy she is far away from this.
If only he could see his native coast,
could turn his eyes, for one last time, upon
his home! But Ceyx does not know just where
his own dear country lies: the sea is so
tumultuous; and clouds as black as pitch
conceal the sky; the night is doubly dark.
A twister lashes at—and cracks—the mast;
the rudder, too, is smashed. A wave,
triumphant—proud of all its spoils and prey—
heaves high, looks down upon the other waves,
until—as if one were to tear away
Mount Athos or Mount Pindus from its base—
it falls headlong and, with its crushing weight,
sends down the ship. And almost all the men,
caught in the vortex, never rise again.
Latin [552–59]
But some do cling to the dismembered ship’s
torn planks. And with the hand that once had gripped
the scepter, Ceyx clutches at a remnant
and calls—in vain—upon his father and
father-in-law; but above all, his lips
call on his wife, Alcyone; he thinks
again, again of her—his memories
are like an eddy; he implores the waves
to bear his body to a shore where he
may yet be seen by his Alcyone
and she, with love, may bury his dead body.
And as he swims, each time the surge permits
his mouth to open, she is on his lips:
the name—“Alcyone, Alcyone”—
of one so distant. And he murmurs it
even beneath the waves, when he can’t lift
his weary head. At last, a jet-black mass
of churning water arches overhead,
above the other waves, and then it breaks—
and buries him. The Morning Star—that dawn—
is dim and dark: you never would have known
that he was Lucifer—since he could not
desert his station in the sky, he wrapped
his face in thick clouds.
In the land of Ceyx,
his wife, who’d not yet heard of the disaster,
counts off the nights; already she prepares
the festive clothes that he and she will wear
at his homecoming—conjuring a thing
that never is to be. Devotedly,
she offers up incense to all the gods;
but Juno is the one she honors most,
and Juno’s shrine is where she always goes
to pray for Ceyx—one already dead:
she asks that her dear husband may be kept
free from all harm and injury, that he
come home to his Alcyone, and meet
Latin [559–81]
and love no other woman on his journey.
Of those three things Alcyone implored,
only the last request was granted her.
But Juno found it hard to hear these pleas—
these prayers for the dead; that she might free
her altar from the unclean hands of one
whom death has touched with loss, she called upon
her faithful Iris: “Trusted messenger,
go quickly to the drowsy house of Sleep,
and have him send Alcyone a dream,
an image that appears in Ceyx’ shape
and shows him dead and tells of his true fate.”
Such were her words; and Iris, in her cloak
that shows a thousand colors, arched across
the sky in rainbow guise. She went to seek
the palace of King Sleep, well-hid beneath
its covering of clouds.
A cavern stands
close to the land of the Cimmerians:
a hollow mountain shelters many deep
recesses of that cave; and sluggish Sleep
lives there, in secrecy. No sun can reach
within—none of its rising, noontime, or
its setting rays; there fog and vapors pour
up from the earth: it is crepuscular.
No crested cock keeps vigil there, no crows
to summon bright Aurora; there is no
watchdog to break the silence with his barks,
no goose, who’s even more alert than hounds.
One hears no cattle low, no roaring beasts,
no sound of branches rustling in the breeze;
there is no clattering of human speech.
That place belongs to silence—but for this:
out from the bottom of the stony cave,
the stream of Lethe flows; and as its waves
traverse the gravel bed along their way,
Latin [581–604]
their gentle murmuring invites to sleep.
The entranceway is graced by many beds
of flowering poppies and the countless herbs
from which damp night distills her hypnagogic
elixir to spread sleep across dark earth.
Lest any turning hinge might creak, there is
no door in all that house; no watchman waits
along the threshold. In the central space
a couch of ebony stands tall—black, too,
the feather mattress and the heavy blanket.
The god himself sprawls there with languid limbs;
and there, upon all sides, arrayed around him,
in many miming shapes, lie futile Dreams,
as many as a harvest’s ears of wheat,
as many as the leaves upon the trees,
or as the grains of sand cast on the beach.
No sooner had the virgin Iris made
her way into that room (she brushed away
the Dreams that blocked her path), than all that space,
that sacred dwelling place, was filled with light:
the splendor of her cloak undid the night.
And Sleep, whose eyes were heavy, found it hard
to open them and, when he propped himself,
sank back again and knocked his chin, nodding
against his chest, until at last he shook
himself free of himself and, rising up—
his elbow served as his support—asked her
(for he indeed knew who she was) just why
she had come; and Iris answered him: “O Sleep,
the gentlest of the gods, it’s you who bring
repose to everything; you offer peace
unto the soul; you banish cares; you soothe
our bodies worn with labor; you refresh
our bodies, so that we can face new tasks;
it’s you, o Sleep, of whom I now ask this:
do tell a Dream, one of that band who knows
just how to mime true forms, that he must go
Latin [604–27]
to Trachin, town where Hercules was born;
before Alcyone, have him appear
as one who was shipwrecked, and have him wear
the features of King Ceyx. So says Juno.”
Her mission done, she left; for she could not
withstand that cavern’s soporific force.
As she felt sleep invade her limbs, she fled.
Along the curving rainbow arch by which
she’d passed before, she now retraced her steps.
King Sleep was father of a thousand sons—
indeed a tribe—and of them all, the one
he chose was Morpheus, who had such skill
in miming any human form at will.
No other Dream can match his artistry
in counterfeiting men: their voice, their gait,
their face—their moods; and, too, he imitates
their dress precisely and the words they use
most frequently. But he mimes only men;
for it’s another Dream who can become
a quadruped, a bird, or a long snake:
that Dream the gods call Icelos—but when
he’s named by common mortals, he’s Phobetor.
And still another brother Dream can claim
quite special gifts: his name is Phantasos;
the forms that he assumes deceive, intrigue:
the shapes of earth and rocks, and water, trees—
in sum, of lifeless things. And there are Dreams
who show themselves by night to kings and chiefs,
while others roam among the common folk.
But the old god sets all of these aside;
and of his many sons, he takes this one
to do what Thanaus’ daughter said he must—
and as I said, that Dream was Morpheus.
That done, the god gives way to drowsiness;
he hides his head beneath his thick black blankets.
Latin [627–49]
Now, quick to leave the cavern, Morpheus
flies on his noiseless wings across the darkness.
And soon he reaches Trachin. There he sheds
his wings: he takes the face and form of Ceyx
and, like a pale cadaver—not a shred
of clothing on him—stands beside the bed
of the dejected wife. His hair is drenched,
his beard is soggy; dripping from his head
are heavy drops. Over the bed he bends;
his face is wet with tears. As Morpheus cries,
he says: “Sad wife, oh, do you recognize
your Ceyx? Or has death disfigured me?
Look carefully; you’ll see who I must be.
Yet I am not your husband but his Shade.
Alcyone, it is in vain you prayed—
I’m dead. Don’t let delusion leave you prey
to barren hopes: I can’t come home again.
The south wind caught my ship on the Aegean;
he tossed her with his tempest force—she sank.
Again, again, my lips cried out your name
as I was thrust below and drank the waves;
I am no messenger whom one can doubt—
what you hear now is not some vague report.
It’s I myself, the one who was shipwrecked,
who tell you here—directly—of my death.
Come, then, shed tears, and put on mourning dress;
don’t let me go unhonored by lament
down into Tartarus, that barren land!”
And Morpheus employed a voice so like
her husband’s, that he could not be denied.
Even his tears seemed true; and as he moved,
his gestures were the gestures Ceyx used.
Alcyone, still in her sleep, began
to mourn and weep; she tried to reach her man
with outstretched arms; she wanted to embrace
his body, but it was thin air she clasped.
Latin [650–75]
She cried: “Wait, wait for me! Where do you flee!
Let me go, too, with you!” Her own loud plea
and Ceyx’ image woke the anxious wife;
and, first, she looked around to see if he
whom she had seen just now was at her side.
Her servingwomen, startled by her cries,
had brought a lamp into her room. But she
could not find him; she beat her cheeks, then ripped
her robe off from her chest, and rent her breasts;
and she tore at her hair—she took no care
to loose it first; and to her nurse, who asked
what was the cause of such despair, she cried:
“Alcyone is done! She’s done! She died
together with her Ceyx. Cast aside
consoling words! He’s shipwrecked! He is dead!
I saw him, and I knew him, and I tried
to hold him in my outstretched hand; I tried
to clasp and—as he left—to hold him back.
It was a Shade, but it was his true Shade—
my husband’s Shade. Yes, yes, his face did lack
the life that it once had, its radiance.
Poor me, I saw him pale and naked and
with hair still damp. A sorry sight, he stood
just here, just at this point” (and here she bent
to see if there were still some trace of him).
“This is what I had feared; I foresaw this—
that’s why I begged him not to leave me, not
to trust the winds! But since you left to die,
you should at least have had me at your side.
It would have been far better for me then;
no instant of my life would have been spent
away from you; then, too, we’d not have met
death separately. For now, though I am here,
I’ve died; though I am here, I, too, contend
with waves; and although I am not at sea,
it is the sea that swallows me. Indeed,
my heart would be more savage than the sea,
were I to strive to live still longer, try
Latin [676–703]
to overcome—to last beyond—this grief.
But I won’t try; I won’t leave you alone;
at least this time, sad Ceyx, I shall come
along with you; this time I’m your companion.
And if we’re not entombed in the same urn,
at least the letters of our epitaph
will join us; if my bones don’t touch your bones,
at least my name will touch your name.” But grief
stops speech; her words retreat before her moans;
from her sad heart, all she can draw are groans.
When morning came, she went down to the shore,
to that same place where she had gone before
to see him sailing off. She lingered there
and murmured: “But this very spot is where
he loosed that cable, and this spot is where
he kissed me at his parting.” Even as
she called to mind each scene and watched the sea,
she saw, far off, along the waves, that something
was floating—and it could well be a body.
At first, she was not sure just what it was;
but when the surge had pushed it somewhat closer—
though still far off—it was becoming clear
that, in that sea, there was indeed a body.
She did not know whose corpse it was; and yet
Alcyone was moved, for he was shipwrecked;
and she took pity on him, just as one
will pity an unknown: “Unhappy man,
whoever you may be—unhappy wife,
if you indeed are married.” And the body,
thrust forward by the waves, came closer still;
and even as she watched it, she grew more
bewildered. It was closer now to shore,
and closer, closer still—now she was sure:
it was her husband. “It is he!” she cried;
she tore her cheeks, her hair, her robe; she stretched
her trembling hands toward Ceyx, as she said:
Latin [703–27]
“O dearest husband, is it thus that you,
so wretchedly, at last return to me?”
Along the shore, there stood a long breakwater:
the work of man, it broke the waves’ onslaught
by sapping it before it gained full force.
And there she ran and leaped into the surge.
That she could reach that mole was in itself
a miracle: in truth, Alcyone
had flown to that high spot with her new wings.
With these, she beat the yielding waves and skimmed—
poor bird—the combers’ crests; her mouth—by now
a slender beak—gave forth such sounds as seemed
to come from one who knew lament and grief.
And when she reached the silent, lifeless body,
she threw her newfound wings round his dear limbs;
she tried to warm him with her kisses, but
in vain—her beak was hard, her kisses cold.
Did Ceyx feel the kisses that she gave?
Or was it just the motion of the waves
that made the drowned man seem to lift his face?
Men were unsure. But this must be the truth:
he felt those kisses. For the gods were moved
to pity, changing both of them to birds—
at last. Their love remained; they shared one fate.
Once wed, they still were wed: they kept their bond.
They mate; they rear their young; when winter comes,
for seven peaceful days Alcyone—
upon a cliff that overlooks the sea—
broods on her nest. The surge is quiet then,
for Aeolus won’t let his winds run free:
he keeps them under guard, so that the sea
maintain the peace his fledgling grandsons need.
Latin [727–48]