Where they glitter along in their golden cars,
We frolic and bound with the playful wave,
Which the prison-like confines of earth doth lave;
We are glad, we are glad, and in breeze or in blast,
We will sport round the world as long as 'twill last."
Jennings.
Alcyone, the daughter of Æolus, married Ceyx, who was drowned as he was going to Claros to consult an oracle. Alcyone was apprized in a dream of her husband's fate, and finding on the morrow his body upon the shore, she threw herself into the sea. The Gods, touched by her fidelity, changed her and her husband into the birds of the same name, who keep the waters calm and serene while they build and sit on their nests in the surface of the sea.
"O, poor Alcyone!
What were thy feelings on the stormy strand,
When thou saw'st Ceyx borne a corse to land?