led to the transformation of Ceyx and Alcyone into halcyons. For Ceyx having been drowned in a tempest, and Alcyone having cast herself into the sea upon the body, the gods, compassionating their misfortune, we are told, operated this prodigy in their behalf.
When she, ’twixt sleep and waking, made a strain
To reach her loved Bireno, but in vain.
Stanza xx. lines 7 and 8.
She no one found; the dame her arm withdrew;
She tried again, yet no one found; she spread
Both arms, now here, now there, and sought anew;
Now either leg; but yet no better sped.
Fear banished sleep; she oped her eyes: in view
Was nothing: she no more her widowed bed
Would keep, but from the couch in fury sprung,
And headlong forth from the pavilion flung.
Stanza xxi.
Here Ariosto has, by his addition of the lady’s feeling for her lover with her legs, somewhat injured the extreme delicacy of the picture presented to us by Ovid. The Latin poet says, speaking as Ariadne:
“Incertum vigilans, a somno languid a movi
“Thesea prensuras semisupina manus.
“Nullus erat: referoque manus, iterumque retento,
“Perque torum moveo brachia; nullus erat.
“Excussêre metus somnum: conterrita surgo,
“Membraque sunt viduo præcipitata toro.”
In questions of delicacy, indeed, Ariosto has offended more than once in this description; for he certainly need not have told us, in a preceding stanza, that Olympia slept as sound as a bear.
