What this project is about.
This one is from Book 11.
How long it took to read this (aloud): 4 mins 54s
What it’s “about”: Morpheus does the ‘dreamhack’, so Alcyone knows Ceyx is dead. She grieves her husband and then, well, Kingfisher lives…
Words I didn’t know: None
Quotable quotes:
On gliding wings (one could not hear them stir)
Morpheus made way to Alcyone’s city.
He dropped the wings and took the mask of Ceyx;
Naked as Ceyx in bed and pale as death,
He leaned above the widow where she slept;
AND
Nor am I rumour’s image,
Half truth, half lies, but naked as you see me
At your side, this thing is what I am;
AND
It almost washed ashore, then floated clear.
“It is he,” she said, “he has come back to me.”
She stripped herself, then ran upon a breaker
That caught the waves, and leaped as if broad wings
Took her to sea, even her cries were birdlike;
And as she neared the floating man beneath her,
She thrust her growing beak between his lips.
The story is he raised his face to hers,
And I half think Ceyx did — if he had life.
The gods changed both to birds, and both were one,
Though love had given them a strange mutation.
Today they live and breed upon those waters
And for a week in winter, Alcyone
Keeps her brood warm within a floating nest,
Aeolus stills the winds that shake the waters
To guard his grandsons on a peaceful sea.
How it lands to my eco-sensibility: xx
Obvious allusions, ways it was used (that I am aware of already) : xx
What I know I didn’t ‘get’: xx
To my knowledge, who’s used it why/how (RACC): xx
Further research questions: xx
Anything else: xx
According to Pseudo-Apollodorus‘s account, this couple often sacrilegiously called each other “Zeus” and “Hera“.[5] This angered Zeus, so while Ceyx was at sea (in order to consult an oracle, according to Ovid), he killed Ceyx with a thunderbolt. Soon after, Morpheus, the god of dreams, disguised as Ceyx, appeared to Alcyone to tell her of her husband’s fate. In her grief she threw herself into the sea. Out of compassion, the gods changed them both into “halcyon birds” (common kingfishers), named after her. Apollodorus says that Ceyx was turned into a gannet, and not a kingfisher.
See also Kingfisher Lives by Julian Rathbone
marchudson.net 
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