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Ceyx and Halcyone
The Halcyone Birds
Part II
Iris put on her robe of many colors, and tingeing the sky with her bow, flew to the palace of the God of Sleep. Near the Cimmerian country, a mountain cave is the abode of the dull god, Hypnos, Here the sun never shines. From the bottom of the rock, the River Lethe flows, and by its murmur invites to sleep. Poppies grow abundantly before the door of the cave, and other herbs, from whose juices Night collects slumbers, which she scatters over the darkened earth. Inside the palace lies a couch of black ebony, adorned with black plumes and black curtains. There the god reclines, his limbs relaxed with sleep. Around him lie dreams, resembling all various forms.
As soon as the goddess entered and brushed away the dreams that hovered around her, her brightness lit up all the cave. The god eventually woke, and asked what her visit was for. She answered that Hera commanded that he dispatch a dream to Halcyone, in the city of Trachinae, representing her lost husband and all the events of the wreck.
Having delivered her message, Iris hasted away, for she could not longer endure the stagnant air. Of Hypnos' numerous sons, Morpheus was the most expert at immitating people. Icelos was most expert at impersonating birds, beasts, and serpents. And Phantasos was expert at turning himself into rocks, waters, woods, and other things without life. Hypnos chose, from all his sons, Morpheus, to perform the command of Iris; then laid his head on his pillow and yielded himself to grateful repose.
Morpheus flew, making no noise with his wings, and soon came to the Haemonian city, where, laying aside his wings, he assumed the form of Ceyx. Under that form, but pale like a dead man, naked, he stood before the couch of the wretched wife. His beard seemed soaked with water, and water trickled from his drowned locks. Leaning over the bed, tears streaming from his eyes, he said, "Do you recognize your Ceyx, unhappy wife, or has death too much changed my visage? Behold me, know me, your husband's shade, instead of himself. Your prayers, Halcyone, availed me nothing. I am dead. No more deceive yourself with vain hopes of my return. The stormy winds sunk my ship in the Aegean Sea; waves filled my mouth while it called aloud on you. I come in person, a shipwrecked man, to tell you my fate. Arise! Give me tears, give me lamentations, let me not go down to Tartarus unwept." Halcyone, weeping, groaned, and stretched out her arms in her sleep, striving to embrace his body, but grasping only the air.
In the morning she went to the sea-shore, and sought the spot where she last saw him, on his departure. Gazing out into the sea, she saw the body of her husband tossed about in the waves. She leaped into the ocean to join her husband in death, but the gods had pitty on her and changed both her and her husbang into birds. They live on, mating and having young ones. For seven placid days, in winter time, Halcyone broods over her nest, which floats upon the sea. Then the way is safe to seamen. Aeolus guards the winds, and keeps them from disturbing the deep. The sea is given up, for the time, to his grandchildren.
One of the sailors who sailed upon that sea had such a hard time getting
home, that his adventures became an epic poem. His name was
Odysseus
