by what he promised, he did not waste time,
immediately ordering his ship
brought out of drydock down to water’s edge
and suitably provisioned.
But at the sight,
as though the future had been told to her,
Alcyone was horrified once more,
and once again her tears began to flow,
and she embraced him most unhappily,
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and managed only one word of farewell,
before she fainted. Even as the king
was searching for some pretext to delay,
the young men seated two by two in rows
drew the oars back to their powerful breasts,
cleaving the waters with long, even strokes.
She raised her head, and leaning forward, fixed
her blurry gaze upon him where he stood
on the curved poop deck, waving back to her,
and she returned his signal till the ship
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had gone so far she couldn’t make him out;
but as long as she was able to, she followed
its path, until, when it was almost gone,
she watched the fluttering of its topmost sail;
when even this had disappeared from view,
she anxiously retreated to her chamber
and cast herself down upon her bed;
but empty bed and bedroom both renewed
her tears, by summoning to mind at once
that part of her now taken from her life.
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As soon as they had gotten out of harbor,
a breeze came up and made the rigging creak:
the oars were shipped, the yard run up the mast,
and the sails were spread to catch the rising wind.
The ship sped through the sea, and now was far
from either shore—a little less, perhaps,
but certainly no more than halfway there—
when, as night fell, the swelling waves began
to whiten, and the east wind blew more fiercely:
“Lower the yard, now, now,” cried the captain,
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“tight reef the sail!” Those were his orders, but
the gale winds blew the words back in his face,
and no one’s voice could possibly be heard
over the breaking waters.
Nonetheless,
some hurry on their own to stow the oars,
some seal the rowlocks, others reef the sails;
here one is busy bailing out the ship,
sending the water back to where it came from,
and here one hastily secures the spars;
while this is happening in great confusion,
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from every side, the winds are waging war
and agitating the indignant waves.
The captain now admits to his own fear,
has no idea of what is happening,
what orders he should issue or enjoin:
his skill is nothing, in comparison
to the greater power of the fury’s force.
Men cry in panic, and the rigging creaks,
the surging waves resound, the thunder crashes:
the waves are high as mountains and appear
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to reach up to the heavens, where they drench
the overhanging clouds with their wild froth;
and now the water gets its color from
the yellow sand stirred from the bottom, now
the water turns far blacker than the Styx,
or white with rolling sheets of hissing spume.
The ship from Trachin was likewise beset
by these vicissitudes: now lifted up
as to a mountain’s summit, she appears
to gaze down at the pit of Acheron;
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now plunged beneath a curving wall of water,
she looks up from the underworld to heaven.
The ship’s sides, often battered by the blows
of surging waves, give out enormous crashes,
nor are those blows less resonant than when
the iron-headed ram or the catapult
makes tortured towers shake from its assault;
and as ferocious lions who gain strength
by going on attack will hurl themselves
onto the hunter’s arms and leveled spears,
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so, when the insurgent winds had roused the waves,
these were much higher than the highest part
of the tall ship they dashed themselves against.
And now the hull, its covering of wax
all worn away, begins to spring its wedges,
providing entrance to the lethal waves:
see where the sheets of water pour in floods
from bursting clouds; it would have seemed to you
that all of heaven was sinking to the sea,
and the swollen sea was mounting to the heavens!
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Sails were rain-sodden, waters from above
were mixed in thoroughly with those below;
the stars were all put out, and blackest night
bore down with its own darkness and the storm’s.
That darkness, nonetheless, was shattered by
the flickering thunderbolts that lit the sky
and made the raindrops glitter as they fell.
Boldly the flood now sprang onto the ship,
and like a soldier, who, surpassing all
his many comrades, in the last assault
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upon the walls of a beleaguered city,
after so many tries, achieves his aim,
and, fired by the love of praise, leaps over,
and one man holds the wall against a thousand;
just so, when nine successive waves have battered
the hull of that tall ship without success,
the tenth wave rushes in with greater force,
and does not end its struggle with the weary
vessel before it penetrates the wall
of the captured ship.
Part of the sea was now
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still trying to invade the craft, while part
had done so, and already was inside;
fear and confusion now were everywhere,
as in a city under siege, whose walls,
sapped from outside, are held fast from within.
Skill fails, and courage sinks, and every wave
seems to bring with it one more way to die,
as it comes rushing on and breaking in;
this one is unable to stop crying,
that one’s in a stupor; over here
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is one who calls a funeral a blessing,
while here one lifts his unavailing arms
in vain to sightless heaven for its help;
one calls upon his brothers and his father,
and one upon his home and family,
and each upon what he has left behind.
But Ceyx is fixed upon his Alcyone,
and it is her name now upon his lips,
and yet, though she is all that he desires,
he nonetheless rejoices in her absence;
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he wishes to behold his land once more,
and see, before his eyes are closed in death,
his palace, but in truth, he does not know
in which direction land and palace lie:
the waters boil in whirlpools, and the sky
is so completely hidden by dark clouds
that blackest night is doubled in its darkness.
A whirlwind breaking in destroys the mast
and wrecks the rudder too; now the last wave,
like a conqueror rejoicing in his spoils,
790
rears up and looks down on the lesser waves,
and no more lightly
than if one could tear
Mount Athos and Mount Pindus from their seats
and haul them both into the open sea,
that wave came crashing down upon the ship,
and by its weight and overwhelming force,
plunged it right to the bottom; with it went
most of its men, sucked down into that vortex,
and fated not to breathe the air again.
But some still hang on pieces of the ship
800
that floated to the surface; here the hand
that used to hold the scepter clings to flotsam.
Ceyx calls upon his father and upon
the father of his wife—in vain, alas,
but now the name most often on his lips
is that of Alcyone, repeatedly
recalled to mind and called to, as he swam:
he prayed that he might float where she would find him,
and that his lifeless corpse could be entombed
by her devoted hands. And while he swam,
810
as often as the waves allowed him breath,
he murmured Alcyone’s name to them
and to himself.
But look now: towering
over the lesser swells, a giant bow
of blackest water breaks upon him now
and buries him beneath the shattered surface.
That morning you would not have recognized
great Lucifer in his obscurity,
for even though he could not leave the sky,
he hid his face within the densest clouds.
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But Alcyone, meanwhile, unaware
of this disaster, counting down the nights,
makes haste now as she finishes the robes
that he will wear when he returns to her,
and those that she will wear herself as well,
at the homecoming that will never be.
Devoutly, she sends clouds of incense up
to all the gods, but most of all to Juno,
before whose altar she prays on behalf
of her poor spouse, no longer in existence,
830
that he would be kept safe and would return
and would not find another woman—this
alone of all her prayers would find an answer.
The house of Sleep
But Juno could no longer bear to be
petitioned for someone already dead,
and wished to keep her altar from the touch
of hands that were unwittingly profaned;
“Iris,” she said, “most faithful messenger,
go to the soporific halls of Sleep
as swiftly as you can, and order him
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to send a likeness of extinguished Ceyx
to Alcyone, sleeping, so that she
might learn the truth about her situation.”
The goddess spoke. Her messenger put on
a cloak dyed in a thousand varied colors,
and crossed the sky upon a rainbow’s arc,
and sought, as ordered, the abode of Sleep,
concealed beneath a panoply of clouds.
There is a hollow mountain near the land
of the Cimmerians, and deep within
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there is a cave where idle Sleep resides,
his special place, forbidden to the Sun
at any hour from the dawn to dusk;
the earth around it breathes out clouds of fog
through dim, crepuscular light.
No wakeful cock
summons Aurora with his crowing song,
no restless watchdog interrupts the stillness,
nor goose, more keenly vigilant than dogs:
no wild and no domesticated beasts,
not even branches, rustling in the wind,
860
and certainly no agitated clamor
of men in conversation.
Here mute repose
abides, and from the bottom of the cave,
the waters of the sleep-inducing Lethe
flow murmuring across their bed of pebbles.
Outside, in front, the fruitful poppies bloom,
and countless herbs as well, that dewy night
collects and processes, extracting Sleep,
which it distributes to the darkened earth.
Doors are forbidden here, lest hinges creak,
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no guardian is found upon the threshold;
but on a dais in the middle of the cave
a downy bed of blackest ebony
is set with a coverlet of muted hue;
upon it lies the god himself, at peace,
his knotted limbs in languorous release;
around him on all sides are empty shapes
of dreams that imitate so many forms,
as many as the fields have ears of wheat,
or trees have leaves, or seashore grains of sand.
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The maiden brushed aside these obstacles
before her as she entered; the god’s home
was lit up by the splendor of her garments.
But Sleep could scarcely lift his eyelids, weighed
down by his idleness: time after time
they slid back down again, and his chin bumped
against his breastbone as he nodded, till
he finally awakened from himself,
and hoisted himself up upon one elbow,
and recognizing Iris, asked her what
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she had come there for.
The messenger replied,
“O Sleep, that gives your peace to everything,
most tranquil, Sleep, of all the deities,
the foe of care, the spirit’s gentle balm
that soothes us after difficult employment,
restoring our powers for the morrow;
O Sleep, whose forms are equal to the real,
order an image in the shape of Ceyx
to go to Alcyone in her chamber
and represent the shipwreck that destroyed him.
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Juno commands this.”
Having carried out
her orders, Iris took her leave at once,
unable any longer to resist
the slumber she felt stealing through her limbs;
upon that rainbow she had lately crossed.
But from the nation of his thousand sons,
old Father Sleep arouses Morpheus,
skillful at simulating human form:
there wasn’t any other of his children
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as capable of copying the ways
men walked, or looked, or sounded when they spoke;
he did their clothing, too, and knew what words
they would most often use. He specialized
in human beings only: someone else
impersonated beasts and birds and serpents;
the gods refer to him as Icelon,
but human beings call him Phobetor.
A third, Phantasas, has another skill:
he imitates the soil and rocks and waves
920
and tree trunks, anything without a mind;
these show themselves at night to kings and leaders,
while others wander among common folk.
The father passed these by and chose from all
his offspring Morpheus to do the task
Iris had ordered; having done so, he
repaired immediately to his couch
and closed his eyes; his chin fell to his breast:
time for old Sleep to get a little rest.
Ceyx and Alcyone (2)
Morpheus, meanwhile, flies on silently
930
through darkness, coming in no time at all
to the city of Haemonia, where he
removes his wings, assumes the f
ace and form
of Ceyx, and turns up, pale as death and naked,
in the bedchamber of his wretched wife,
with his beard soaked, and matted, streaming hair.
And then, profusely weeping, he leans over
their bed and says, “Do you not recognize
your Ceyx, my wholly pitiable spouse,
or have my features been so changed with death?
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Another look—you’ll recognize me then,
and find no husband but your husband’s shade!
Your prayers, my Alcyone, went unanswered!
I am now dead! Don’t hope for my return!
The cloud-gathering south wind seized my ship
on the Aegean, tossed it in high winds
until it broke apart; yours was the name
upon my lips, in vain, until I drowned.
“No doubtful messenger announces this,
you hear no unreliable account:
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but I myself am uttering these words,
the shipwrecked man who stands before you now!
“Arise then, stir yourself, go shed your tears
and put on garments suitable for mourning:
do not let me go off to Tartarus,
that place of emptiness, without lament.”
Morpheus told her these things in a voice
that she could easily believe was his,
and seemed to be sincerely weeping too,
and gestured with his hands as Ceyx would do.
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Weeping, Alcyone groans and moves her arms
in sleep: attempting to embrace his form,
she grasps the air instead, and cries out,
“Stay!
We’ll go as one where you are hastening!”
Awakened by the sound of her own voice
and by her husband’s image, she attempts
to verify if it was really him
whom she has just observed; roused by her cries,
the servants had brought in a lamp, and she,
unable now to find him anywhere,
970
began to strike herself about the face,
and tearing at the robes upon her breast,
struck it as well, and without bothering
to let her hair down, started tearing it.
And answered, when they asked what caused her grief,
“Alcyone is no one any more:
she died with Ceyx! No consolation, please!
He perished in a shipwreck: this I know,
for I have seen and recognized my man,
and stretched my hands to hold him as he fled!
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“He was a ghost—but even as a ghost,
he clearly was my husband. Nonetheless,
if you should ask, he did not quite appear
as normally he did, nor did his face
glow as it usually used to do.
“I saw the doomed man standing pale as death
and naked with his hair still dripping wet:
look where he just now stood, right over here!”