e bands away; then to her nurse
Anxious the subject of her grief to learn--
"Alcyoene,"--she cries--"is now no more!
"She with her Ceyx in one moment fell.
"Hence with your soothing words; shipwreck'd he dy'd.
"I saw; I knew him; as he fled me, stretch'd
"My arms to hold the fugitive.--Ah! no!
"The shadow fled, 'twas but his ghost; but shade
"My husband mere resembling ne'er was form'd.
"Yet had he not his wonted looks, nor shone
"In former brightness his beloved face.
"I saw him, hapless stand with pallid cheek,
"Naked, with tresses dropping still. Lo! here
"Wretched he stood, just on the spot I point:"--
Then anxious try'd his footmarks there to trace.--
"This did my mind foreboding fear; I pray'd
"When me thou fled'st, the winds thou would'st not trust:
"But since to sure destruction forth thou went'st,
"Would that by me companion'd thou had'st gone.
"With thee my bliss had been;--with thee to go.
"Unwasted then one moment of the space
"For life allow'd; not ev'n in death disjoin'd.
"But now I perish, and upon the waves,
"Though absent, float; the main me overwhelms,
"Though from the main far distant. Mental storms
"To me more cruel were than ocean's waves,
"Should I but longer seek to spin out life,
"And combat such deep grief? I will not strive
"Nor wretched thee desert; but now, though late,
"Now will I join thee; and the funeral verse
"Shall us unite; not in the self-same urn,
"Yet in the self-same tomb; bones join'd with bones,
"Allow'd not, yet shall name with name be seen."--
The rest by grief was chok'd, and sounding blows
Each sentence interrupted; while deep groans
Burst from her raving bosom. Morning shone,
And forth she issu'd to the shore, and sought
In grief the spot, where last his face she view'd
Departing. "Here,"--she said,--"as slow he went,
"As slow he loos'd his cables; on this beach
"The parting kiss he gave." While her mind's eye
Retraces every circumstance, she looks,
And something sees far floating on the waves,
Not much unlike a man: dubious at first
What it may be, she views it: nearer now
The billows drive it; and though distant still,
Plain to the eye a body was descry'd.
Whose body, witless, still a shipwreck'd wretch
With boding omen mov'd her; and in tears
She wail'd him as a stranger in these plaints.--
"Unhappy wretch! whoe'er thou art; and she
"Thy wife, if wife thou h