Mam monologue — The Alchemist

'Tis like your Irish wood, 'Gainst cob-webs. I have a piece of Jason's fleece, too, Which was no other than a book of alchemy, Writ in large sheep-skin, a good fat ram-vellum. Such was Pythagoras' thigh, Pandora's tub, And, all that fable of Medea's charms, The manner of our work; the bulls, our furnace, Still breathing fire; our argent-vive, the dragon: The dragon's teeth, mercury sublimate, That keeps the whiteness, hardness, and the biting; And they are gathered into Jason's helm, The alembic, and then sow'd in Mars his field, And thence sublimed so often, till they're fixed. Both this, the Hesperian garden, Cadmus' story, Jove's shower, the boon of Midas, Argus' eyes, Boccace his Demogorgon, thousands more, All abstract riddles of our stone. [ENTER FACE, AS A SERVANT.] --How now! Do we succeed? Is our day come? and holds it?