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 METAMORPHOSESBOOK IV beneath the sea, its tentacles embracing him on every side. The son of Atlas resists as best he may and denies the nymph the joy she craves; but she holds on, and clings as if grown fast to him. 'Strive as you may, wicked boy,' she cries, 'still shall you not escape me. Grant me this, ye gods, and may no day ever come thatshall separate him from me or me from him.' The gods heard her prayer. For their two bodies, joined together as they were, were merged in one, with one face and form for both. As when one grafts a twig on some tree, he sees the branches grow one, and with common life come to maturity, so were these two bodies knit in close embrace: they were no longer two, nor such as to be called, one, woman, and one, man. They seemed neither, and yet both. « When now he saw that the waters into which he had plunged had made him but half-man, and that his limbs had become enfeebled there, stretching out his hands and speaking, though not with manly tones, Hermaphroditus cried: 'Oh, grant this boon, my father and my mother, to your son who bears the names of both whoever comes into this pool as man may he go forth half-man, and may he weaken at touch of the water.' His parents heard the prayer of their two-formed son and charged the waters with that uncanny power. Alcithoë was done; but still did the daughters of Minyas ply their tasks, despising the god and pro- faning his holy day: when suddenly unseen timbrels sounded harshly in their ears, and flutes, with curving horns, and tinkling cymbals; the air was full of the sweet scent of saffron and of myrrh; and, past all belief, their weft turned green, the hanging cloth changed into vines of ivy; part became grape-vines, and what were but now threads became clinging 205