No More Learning

_ But maturing Time
Teaches all things.

_Hermes. _ Howbeit, thou hast not learnt
The wisdom yet, thou needest.

_Prometheus. _ If I had,
I should not talk thus with a slave like thee.

_Hermes. _ No answer thou vouchsafest, I believe,
To the great Sire's requirement.

_Prometheus. _ Verily
I owe him grateful service,--and should pay it.

_Hermes. _ Why, thou dost mock me, Titan, as I stood
A child before thy face.

_Prometheus. _ No child, forsooth,
But yet more foolish than a foolish child,
If thou expect that I should answer aught
Thy Zeus can ask. No torture from his hand
Nor any machination in the world
Shall force mine utterance ere he loose, himself,
These cankerous fetters from me. For the rest,
Let him now hurl his blanching lightnings down,
And with his white-winged snows and mutterings deep
Of subterranean thunders mix all things,
Confound them in disorder.
None of this
Shall bend my sturdy will and make me speak
The name of his dethroner who shall come.

_Hermes. _ Can this avail thee? Look to it!

_Prometheus. _ Long ago
It was looked forward to, precounselled of.

_Hermes. _ Vain god, take righteous courage! dare for once
To apprehend and front thine agonies
With a just prudence.

_Prometheus. _ Vainly dost thou chafe
My soul with exhortation, as yonder sea
Goes beating on the rock. Oh, think no more
That I, fear-struck by Zeus to a woman's mind,
Will supplicate him, loathed as he is,
With feminine upliftings of my hands,
To break these chains. Far from me be the thought!

_Hermes. _ I have indeed, methinks, said much in vain,
For still thy heart beneath my showers of prayers
Lies dry and hard--nay, leaps like a young horse
Who bites against the new bit in his teeth,
And tugs and struggles against the new-tried rein,--
Still fiercest in the feeblest thing of all,
Which sophism is; since absolute will disjoined
From perfect mind is worse than weak. Behold,
Unless my words persuade thee, what a blast
And whirlwind of inevitable woe
Must sweep persuasion through thee!