No More Learning

MAMMON:
Why what's the matter, my dear fellow, now?
Do the troops mutiny? --decimate some regiments;
Does money fail? --come to my mint--coin paper,
Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed _105
To show his bilious face, go purge himself,
In emulation of her vestal whiteness.

PURGANAX:
Oh, would that this were all! The oracle! !

MAMMON:
Why it was I who spoke that oracle,
And whether I was dead drunk or inspired, _110
I cannot well remember; nor, in truth,
The oracle itself!

PURGANAX:
The words went thus:--
'Boeotia, choose reform or civil war!
When through the streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs, _115
Riding on the Ionian Minotaur. '

MAMMON:
Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold
This sad alternative, it must arrive,
Or not, and so it must now that it has;
And whether I was urged by grace divine _120
Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,
Which must, as all words must, he false or true,
It matters not: for the same Power made all,
Oracle, wine, and me and you--or none--
'Tis the same thing. If you knew as much _125
Of oracles as I do--

PURGANAX:
You arch-priests
Believe in nothing; if you were to dream
Of a particular number in the Lottery,
You would not buy the ticket?

MAMMON:
Yet our tickets
Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken? _130
For prophecies, when once they get abroad,
Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends,
Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue,
Do the same actions that the virtuous do,
Contrive their own fulfilment.
This Iona-- _135
Well--you know what the chaste Pasiphae did,
Wife to that most religious King of Crete,
And still how popular the tale is here;
And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent
From the free Minotaur. You know they still _140
Call themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate,
And everything relating to a Bull
Is popular and respectable in Thebes.
Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules;
They think their strength consists in eating beef,-- _145
Now there were danger in the precedent
If Queen Iona--

NOTES:
_114 the edition 1820; thy cj. Forman;
cf. Motto below Title, and II. i, 153-6. ticket? edition 1820;
ticket! edition 1839.
_135 their own Mrs. Shelley, later editions;
their editions 1820 and 1839.

PURGANAX:
I have taken good care
That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth
With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare!
And from a cavern full of ugly shapes _150
I chose a LEECH, a GADFLY, and a RAT.
The Gadfly was the same which Juno sent
To agitate Io, and which Ezekiel mentions
That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains
Of utmost Aethiopia, to torment _155
Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast
Has a loud trumpet like the scarabee,
His crooked tail is barbed with many stings,
Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each
Immedicable; from his convex eyes _160
He sees fair things in many hideous shapes,
And trumpets all his falsehood to the world.