Metamorphoses

The remembrance of Halcyone affects Ceyx; on the lips of Ceyx there is nothing but Halcyone; and though her alone he regrets, still he rejoices that she is absent. Gladly , too, would he look back to the shore of his native land, and turn his last glance towards his home; but he knows not where it is. The sea is raging in a hurricane so vast, and all the sky is concealed beneath the shade brought on by the clouds of pitchy darkness, and the face of the night is redoubled in gloom . The mast is broken by the violence of the drenching tempest; the helm, too, is broken; and the undaunted wave, standing over its spoil, looks down like a conqueror, upon the waves as they encircle below . Nor, when precipitated, does it rush down less violently, than if any God were to hurl Athos or Pindus, torn up from its foundations, into the open sea; and with its weight and its violence together, it sinks the ship to the bottom. With her, a great part of the crew overwhelmed in the deep water, and not rising again to the air, meet their fate. Some seize hold of portions and broken pieces of the ship. Ceyx himself seizes a fragment of the wreck, with that hand with which he was wont to wield the sceptre, and in vain, alas! he invokes his father, and his father-in-law. But chiefly on his lips, as he swims, is his wife Halcyone. Her he thinks of, and her name he repeats: he prays the waves to impel his body before her eyes; and that when dead he may be entombed by the hands of his friends. While he still swims, he calls upon Halcyone far away, as often as the billows allow him to open his mouth, and in the very waves he murmurs her name . When , lo! a darkening arch of waters breaks over the middle of the waves, and buries his head sinking beneath the bursting billow. Lucifer was obscured that night, and such that you could not have recognized him; and since he was not allowed to depart from the heavens, he concealed his face beneath thick clouds.

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 11

Book 11, Line 34ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-11-34