A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

white-faced and tired-eyed, anxiously watched the sea, that still was
tossing in half-savage mood. Eagerly she gazed at the place where last
the white sail had been seen. Was it not possible that Ceyx, having
weathered the gale, might for the present have foregone his voyage to
Ionia, and was returning to her to bring peace to her heart? But the
sea-beach was strewn with wrack and the winds still blew bits of
tattered surf along the shore, and for her there was only the heavy
labour of waiting, of waiting and of watching for the ship that never
came. The incense from her altars blew out, in heavy sweetness, to
meet the bitter-sweet tang of the seaweed that was carried in by the tide,
for Halcyone prayed on, fearful, yet hoping that her prayers might still
keep safe her man--her king--her lover. She busied herself in laying out
the garments he would wear on his return, and in choosing the clothes
in which she might be fairest in his eyes. This robe, as blue as the sky
in spring--silver-bordered, as the sea in kind mood is bordered with a
feathery silver fringe. She could recall just how Ceyx looked when first
he saw her wear it. She could hear his very tones as he told her that of
all queens she was the peeress, of all women the most beautiful, of all
wives the most dear. Almost she forgot the horrors of the night, so
certain did it seem that his dear voice must soon again tell her the
words that have been love's litany since ever time began.
In the ears of Juno those petitions for him whose dead body was even
then being tossed hither and thither by the restless waves, his murderers,
came at last to be more than even she could bear. She gave command to
her handmaiden Iris to go to the palace of Somnus, god of Sleep and
brother of Death, and to bid him send to Halcyone a vision, in the form
of Ceyx, to tell her that all her weary waiting was in vain.
In a valley among the black Cimmerian mountains the death-god
Somnus had his abode. In her rainbow-hued robes, Iris darted through
the sky at her mistress's bidding, tingeing, as she sped through them,
the clouds that she passed. It was a silent valley that she reached at last.
Here the sun never came, nor was there ever any sound to break the
silence. From the ground the noiseless grey clouds, whose work it is to
hide the sun and moon, rose softly and rolled away up to the mountain
tops and down to the lowest valleys, to work the will of the gods. All