I present, I appear, and my own wreck relate.
Rise, wretched widow, rise, nor undeplored
Permit my soul to pass the Stygian ford;
But rise, prepared in black, to mourn thy perish’d lord.”
Thus said the player god, and adding art
Of voice and gesture, so perform’d his part,
She thought (so like her love the shade appears)
That Ceyx spoke the words, and Ceyx shed the tears.
She groan’d, her inward soul with grief oppress’d,
She sigh’d, she wept, and, sleeping, beat her breast;
Then stretch’d her arms to embrace his body bare;
Her clasping arms enclose but empty air;
At this, not yet awake, she cried, “Oh stay!
One is our fate, and common is our way!”
So dreadful was the dream, so loud she spoke,
That, starting sudden up, the slumber broke,
Then cast her eyes around, in hope to view
Her vanish’d lord, and find the vision true;
For now the maids, who waited her commands,
Ran in with lighted tapers in their hands.
Tired with the search, not finding what she seeks,
With cruel blows she pounds her blubber’d cheeks;
Then from her beaten breast the linen tear,
And cut the golden caul that bound her hair.
Her nurse demands the cause: with louder cries
She prosecutes her griefs, and thus replies:
“No more Alcyone; she suffered death
With her lov’d lord, when Ceyx lost his breath:
No flattery, no false comfort, give me none,
My shipwreck’d Ceyx is for ever gone.
I saw, I saw him manifest in view,
His voice, his figure, and his gestures knew;
His lustre lost, and every living grace,
Yet I retain’d the features of his face;
Though with pale cheeks, wet beard, and dropping hair,
None but my Ceyx could appear so fair;
I would have strain’d him with a strict embrace,
But through my arms he slipp’d, and vanish’d from the place.
There, ev’n just there, he stood:” and, as she spoke,
Where last the spectre was she cast her look;
Fain would she hope, and gazed upon the ground,
If any printed footsteps might be found.
Then sigh’d, and said, “This I too well foreknew,
And my prophetic fears presaged too true:
’Twas what I begg’d, when with a bleeding heart
I took my leave, and suffer’d thee to part;
Or I to go along, or thou to stay,
Never, ah! never, to divide our way!
Happier for me, that all our hours assign’d
Together we had lived, ev’n not in death disjoin’d!
So had my Ceyx still been living here,
Or with my Ceyx I had perish’d there;
Now I die absent, in the vast profound,
And me, without myself, the seas have drown’d.
The storms were not so cruel: should I strive
To lengthen life, and such a grief survive;
But neither will I strive, nor wretched thee
In death forsake, but keep thee company:
If not one common sepulchre contains
Our bodies, or one urn our last remains,
Yet Ceyx and Alcyone shall join,
Their names remember’d in one common line.”
No further voice her mighty grief affords,
For sighs come rushing in between her words
And stopp’d her tongue; but what her tongue denied,
Soft tears, and groans, and dumb complaints supplied.
’Twas morning: to the port she takes her way,
And stands upon the margin of the sea;
That place, that very spot of ground, she sought,
Or thither by her destiny was brought,
Where last he stood; and while she sadly said:
“ ’Twas here he left me, lingering here delay’d
His parting kiss, and there his anchors weigh’d.”
Thus speaking, while her thoughts past actions trace,
And call to mind, admonish’d by the place,
Sharp at her utmost ken she cast her eyes,
And somewhat floating from afar descries:
It seem’d a corpse adrift to distant sight,
But at a distance who could judge aright?
It wafted nearer yet, and then she knew
That what before she but surmised was true:
A corpse it was, but whose it was unknown;
Yet moved, howe’er, she made the case her own,
Took the bad omen of a shipwreck’d man,
As for a stranger wept, and thus began:
“Poor wretch, on stormy seas to lose thy life:
Unhappy thou, but more thy widow’d wife!”
At this she paused, for now the flowing tide
Had brought the body nearer to the side.
The more she looks, the more her fears increase
At nearer sight, and she’s herself the less.
Now driven ashore, and at her feet it lies,
She knows too much in knowing whom she sees,
Her husband’s corpse; at this she loudly shrieks,
“ ’Tis he! ’tis he!” she cries, and tears her cheeks,
Her hair, and vest; and stooping to the sands,
About his neck she cast her trembling hands.
“And is it thus, oh dearer than my life!
Thus, thus return’st thou to thy longing wife?”
She said, and to the neighbouring mole she strode:
(Raised there to break the incursions of the flood:)
Headlong from hence to plunge herself she springs,
But shoots along, supported on her wings;
A bird new made, about the banks she plies,
Not far from shore, and short excursions tries;
Nor seeks in air her humble flight to raise,
Content to skim the surface of the seas.
Her bill, though slender, sends a creaking noise,
And imitates a lamentable voice.
Now lighting where the bloodless body lies,
She, with a funeral note, renews her cries:
At all her stretch, her little wings she spread,
And with her feather’d arms embraced the dead;
Then flickering to his pallid lips, she strove
To print a kiss, the last essay of love.
Whether the vital touch revived the dead,
Or that the moving waters raised his head
To meet the kiss, the vulgar doubt alone
For sure a present miracle was shown.
The gods their shapes to winter birds translate,
But both obnoxious to their former fate.
Their conjugal affection still is tied,
And still the mournful race is multiplied.
The raging Aeolus at length is kind,
Calms every storm, and hushes every wind;
Prepares his empire for his daughter’s ease,
And for his hatching nephews smoothes the seas.
Aesacus Transformed Into a Cormorant
Aesacus, a prince of Troy, becomes enamoured of Hesperia, whom he pursues into the woods, where the maiden is killed by the venom of a snake—Her lover in despair throws himself into the sea, and is changed into a cormorant.
These some old man sees wanton in the air,
And praises the unhappy constant pair;
Then to his friend the long-neck’d cormorant shows,
The former tale reviving others’ woes.
“That sable bird,” he cries, “which cuts the flood,
With slender legs, was once of royal blood,
His ancestors from mighty Tros proceed,
The brave Laomedon, and
