708Grief forbids more, and lamentation breaks into every word, and groans are drawn from her stunned heart. 710It was morning; she goes out of the house to the shore and sadly returns to that place from which she had watched him leave. 712And while she lingers there, and while she says, 'Here he cast off the moorings, on this shore he gave me kisses as he left,' she looks out: in the clear water, some distance off, she sees something like a body. 716And at first it was uncertain what it was; 717after the wave had brought it in a little and, although it was still far off, it was nonetheless plain that it was a body, though not knowing who it was, yet because it was a shipwrecked man, she was moved by the omen and, as though giving her tears to a stranger, said, 'Alas!
720poor man, whoever you are, and your wife, if you have one!' 721Driven by the waves, the body comes nearer; 722and the more she gazes at it, the less and less is she in her right mind, and now she sees it brought close to the near shore, now so that she could recognise it: it was her husband. 725'It is he!' 725she cries, and at once tears her face, her hair, her clothes, and stretching her trembling hands towards Ceyx, 'Is this how, dearest husband, is this how, poor man, you come back to me?' 728she says. 728Next to the waters is a mole built by hand, which breaks the first waves of the sea and wears out beforehand the onslaught of the waters.
731She leaps onto it, and it was a wonder she could: she was flying, and, beating the light air with newborn wings, she skimmed the tops of the waves, a pitiable bird. 734And as she flies, her mouth, clattering with its slender beak, gave out a sound like one in grief and full of complaint. 736But when she touched the mute and bloodless body, embracing the beloved limbs with her new wings, she gave cold kisses in vain with her hard beak. 739Whether Ceyx felt this, or only seemed to lift his face with the motion of the wave, the people were in doubt: but he had felt it, and at last, through the pity of the gods, both are changed into birds.
742Subject to the same fate, their love remained even then, nor was the marriage bond loosened in the birds: they mate and become parents, and through seven calm days in the winter season Alcyone broods on her nest floating on the sea. 747Then the sea's waves lie still: Aeolus guards the winds and keeps them from going out, and makes the sea calm for his grandchildren.