Metamorphoses

  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,

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  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

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  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,

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  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,

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  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,

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  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;

  and so she fled, and swiftly journeyed back

  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

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  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

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  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,

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  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!”