Book 4
perverse and obstinate! Hear me, ye Gods!
271
Let never time release the youth from me;
time never let me from the youth release!”
Propitious deities accord her prayers:
373
the mingled bodies of the pair unite
and fashion in a single human form.
So one might see two branches underneath
a single rind uniting grow as one:
so, these two bodies in a firm embrace
no more are twain, but with a two-fold form
nor man nor woman may be called—Though both
in seeming they are neither one of twain.
When that Hermaphroditus felt the change,
so wrought upon him by the languid fount,
considered that he entered it a man,
and now his limbs relaxing in the stream
he is not wholly male, but only half,—
he lifted up his hands and thus implored,
albeit with no manly voice; “Hear me
O father! hear me mother! grant to me
this boon; to me whose name is yours, your son;
whoso shall enter in this fount a man
must leave its waters only half a man.”
Moved by the words of their bi-natured son
both parents yield assent: they taint the fount
with essences of dual-working powers.
Now though the daughters of King Minyas
have made an end of telling tales, they make
no end of labour; for they so despise
the deity, and desecrate his feast.
While busily engaged, with sudden beat
they hear resounding tambourines; and pipes
and crooked horns and tinkling brass renew,
unseen, the note; saffron and myrrh dissolve
in dulcet odours; and, beyond belief,
the woven webs, dependent on the loom,
take tints of green, put forth new ivy leaves,
or change to grape-vines verdant. There the thread
is twisted into tendrils, there the warp
is fashioned into many-moving leaves—
