Halcyone, weeping, groaned, and stretched out her arms in her sleep, striving to embrace his body, but grasping only the air.  “Stay!” she cried; “whither do you fly? let us go together.”  Her own voice awakened her.  Starting up, she gazed eagerly around, to see if he was still present, for the servants, alarmed by her cries, had brought a light.  When she found him not, she smote her breast and rent her garments.  She cares not to unbind her hair, but tears it wildly.  Her nurse asks what is the cause of her grief.  “Halcyone is no more,” she answers, “she perished with her Ceyx.  Utter not words of comfort, he is shipwrecked and dead.  I have seen him, I have recognized him.  I stretched out my hands to seize him and detain him.  His shade vanished, but it was the true shade of my husband.  Not with the accustomed features, not with the beauty that was his, but pale, naked, and with his hair wet with sea-water, he appeared to wretched me.  Here, in this very spot, the sad vision stood,”—­and she looked to find the mark of his footsteps.  “This it was, this that my presaging mind foreboded, when I implored him not to leave me, to trust himself to the waves.  Oh, how I wish, since thou wouldst go, thou hadst taken me with thee!  It would have been far better.  Then I should have had no remnant of life to spend without thee, nor a separate death to die.  If I could bear to live and struggle to endure, I should be more cruel to myself than the sea has been to me.  But I will not struggle, I will not be separated from thee, unhappy husband.  This time, at least, I will keep thee company.  In death, if one tomb may not include us, one epitaph shall; if I may not lay my ashes with thine, my name, at least, shall not be separated.”  Her grief forbade more words, and these were broken with tears and sobs.

It was now morning.  She went to the seashore, and sought the spot where she last saw him, on his departure.  “While he lingered here, and cast off his tacklings, he gave me his last kiss.”  While she reviews every object, and strives to recall every incident, looking out over the sea, she descries an indistinct object floating in the water.  At first she was in doubt what it was, but by degrees the waves bore it nearer, and it was plainly the body of a man.  Though unknowing of whom, yet, as it was of some shipwrecked one, she was deeply moved, and gave it her tears, saying, “Alas! unhappy one, and unhappy, if such there be, thy wife!” Borne by the waves, it came nearer.  As she more and more nearly views it, she trembles more and more.  Now, now it approaches the shore.  Now marks that she recognizes appear.  It is her husband!  Stretching out her trembling hands towards it, she exclaims, “O dearest husband, is it thus you return to me?”