Hermes.
Patience! patience! thou rash fool!
Have so much patience as to school thy mind
To a right judgment in thy present troubles.
Prometheus.
Lo, I am rockfast, and thy words are waves
That weary me in vain. Let not the thought
Enter thy mind, that I in awe of Zeus
Shall change my nature for a girl's, or beg
The Loathed beyond all loathing—with my hands
Spread out in woman's fashion—to cast loose
These bonds; from that I am utterly removed.
Hermes.
I have talked much, yet further not my purpose;
For thou art in no whit melted or moved
By my prolonged entreaties: like a colt
New to the harness thou dost back and plunge,
Snap at thy bit and fight against the rein.
And yet thy confidence is in a straw;
For stubborness, if one be in the wrong,
Is in itself weaker than naught at all.
See now, if thou wilt not obey my words,
What storm, what triple-crested wave of woe
Unshunnable shall come upon thee. First,
This rocky chasm shall the Father split
With earthquake thunder and his burning bolt,
And he shall hide thy form, and thou shalt hang
Bolt upright, dandled in the rock's rude arms.
Nor till thou hast completed thy long term
Shalt thou come back into the light; and then
The winged hound of Zeus, the tawny eagle,
Shall violently fall upon thy flesh
And rend it as 'twere rags; and every day
