592Near the Cimmerians there is a cave with a deep recess, a hollow mountain, the home and inner sanctum of sluggish Sleep: where Phoebus can never come with his rays, whether rising, at midday or setting. 595Mists mingled with darkness are breathed out from the ground, and the twilight of a doubtful light. 597No wakeful bird with crested head calls forth the dawn with its song there, nor do watchful dogs, or the goose, keener than dogs, break the silence with their voice. 600No wild beast, no cattle, no branches stirred by the breeze, no clamour of human tongues give out a sound: mute repose dwells there; 602yet from the bottom of the rock comes a stream of Lethe's water, through which the wave, gliding with a murmur over crackling pebbles, invites sleep.
605Before the doors of the cave fertile poppies bloom and countless herbs, from whose milk dewy Night gathers sleep and scatters it over the darkened lands. 608No door gives out creaks from a turning hinge: there is none in the whole house, no guard on the threshold. 610But in the middle of the cave there is a high couch of ebony, downy, of one colour, covered with a dark coverlet: on it lies the god himself, his limbs relaxed in languor. 613Around him everywhere lie empty dreams, imitating various forms, as many as the ears of corn the harvest bears, the leaves the wood, the sands the shore casts up.
616As soon as the maiden entered there and brushed aside with her hands the dreams that stood in her way, the sacred house shone with the brightness of her robe, and the god, scarcely lifting his eyes heavy with sluggish weight, and sinking back again and again, and striking the top of his chest with his nodding chin, at last shook himself free of himself; 621and raising himself on his elbow, he asks why she has come (for he knew her). 622And she: 'Sleep, rest of all things, Sleep, gentlest of the gods, peace of the mind, from whom care flees, who soothe bodies weary with hard tasks and restore them for labour, bid dreams, which match true forms in their imitation, go to Alcyone in Herculean Trachis in the likeness of the king, and fashion the phantom of a shipwrecked man.
629Juno commands this.' 629When she had carried out her orders, Iris departs (for she could no longer endure the power of slumber), and as she felt sleep gliding into her limbs, she flees and returns along the arch by which she had just come. 633But the father, out of the crowd of his thousand sons, rouses Morpheus, a craftsman and imitator of shapes: no other there more skilfully reproduces gait and face and tone of speech. 637He adds both the clothes and the words most usual to each; 638but he imitates only men, while another becomes a wild beast, becomes a bird, becomes a long-bodied serpent: the gods call him Icelos, the mortal crowd Phobetor.
641There is also a third, of a different art, Phantasos: he passes deceptively into earth and rock and water and timber, all things that lack life. 644These are wont to show their faces at night to kings and leaders; others roam among the peoples and the commons. 646The old god passes these by and from all the brothers Sleep chooses Morpheus alone to carry out the commands of Thaumas' daughter: and again, relaxed in soft languor, he laid down his head and buried it in the deep bedding. 650He flies on wings that make no sound through the darkness, and within a short space of time reaches the Haemonian city, and, laying aside the wings from his body, passes into the shape of Ceyx, and, having taken that form, pale, like a dead man, without any clothes, he stood before the bed of the unhappy wife: the man's beard seems wet, and water seems to stream heavily from his soaking hair.
657Then, leaning over the bed, with tears streaming down his face, he says this: 'Do you recognise Ceyx, most wretched wife? 659Or is my face changed? 659Look at me now! 659you will know me and find, instead of your husband, your husband's shade. 661Your prayers, Alcyone, have brought me no help: I have perished! 662Do not falsely promise me to yourself! 663The cloudy south wind caught my ship on the Aegean sea, tossed it with a huge blast and broke it apart, and the waves filled my mouth as it called your name in vain. 666No doubtful source brings you this news, you do not hear it in wandering rumours: I myself, shipwrecked, present before you, tell you my fate.
669Rise, come, shed tears and put on mourning, and do not send me unlamented to empty Tartarus.' 671Morpheus adds to these words a voice which she would believe to be her husband's: he seemed to shed real tears too, and he had the gestures of Ceyx's hands. 674Alcyone groans, weeps, and moves her arms in her sleep, and, reaching for his body, embraces the air and cries out: 'Wait! 676where are you hurrying off to? 676we will go together!' 677Troubled by her own voice and the image of her husband, she shakes off sleep and first looks around to see if he is there, he who had just been seen: for the servants, roused by her voice, had brought in a light.
680When she does not find him anywhere, she strikes her face with her hand, tears her clothes from her breast and beats her breast itself, and does not trouble to loosen her hair: she tears it, and to her nurse, who asks what is the cause of her grief, 'Alcyone is no more, she is no more!' 684she says. 684'She has died together with her Ceyx! 685Take away your words of comfort! 686He has perished by shipwreck! 686I saw him and knew him, and stretched out my hands to him as he went, longing to hold him back. 688It was a shade, but even so a clear shade, and truly my husband's!
689He did not have, it is true, if you ask, his usual looks, nor did his face shine as it did before: pale and naked and with hair still wet I saw him, unhappy woman that I am. 692Here in this very place he stood, pitiable, look!' 693(and she looks for any footprints that might remain) 'This it was, this, that I feared with my foreboding mind, and I begged you not to flee from me and follow the winds. 696But surely, since you were going away to perish, I wish you had taken me too! 697It would have been much to my good to go with you: for then I should have spent no part of my life's time apart from you, nor would death have parted us.
700Now, absent, I have perished; absent, I too am tossed on the waves, and without me the sea holds me. 701My heart would be crueller than the sea itself, if I should strive to draw out my life any longer and struggle to survive such grief. 704But I shall neither struggle nor leave you, poor husband, and now at least I shall come as your companion, and in the tomb, if not the urn, yet the lettering shall join us: if not bone with bone, yet name with name I shall touch.'