sk armour of the god I worship.
For the son she bore, the tears of Nereus' daughter, of Tithonus'
consort, could melt thine heart. Look what nations are gathering, what
cities bar their gates and sharpen the sword against me for the
desolation of my children.'

The goddess ended, and, as he hesitates, clasps him round in the soft
embrace of her snowy arms. He suddenly caught the wonted flame, and the
heat known of old pierced him to the heart and overran his melting
frame: even as when, bursting from the thunder peal, a sparkling cleft
of fire shoots through the storm-clouds with dazzling light. His consort
knew, rejoiced in her wiles, and felt her beauty. Then her lord speaks,
enchained by Love the immortal:

'Why these far-fetched pleas? Whither, O goddess, is thy trust in me
gone? Had like distress been thine, [397-431]even then we might
unblamed have armed thy Trojans, nor did doom nor the Lord omnipotent
forbid Troy to stand, and Priam to survive yet ten other years. And now,
if thou purposest war, and this is thy counsel, whatever charge I can
undertake in my craft, in aught that may be made of iron or molten
electrum, whatever fire and air can do, cease thou to entreat as
doubtful of thy strength.' These words spoken, he clasped his wife in
the desired embrace, and, sinking in her lap, wooed quiet slumber to
overspread his limbs.

Thereon, so soon as sleep, now in mid-career of waning night, had given
rest and gone; soon as a woman, whose task is to sustain life with her
distaff and the slender labours of the loom, kindles the ashes of her
slumbering fire, her toil encroaching on the night, and sets a long task
of fire-lit spinning to her maidens, that so she may keep her husband's
bed unsullied and nourish her little children,--even so the Lord of
Fire, nor slacker in his hours than she, rises from his soft couch to
the work of his smithy. An island rises by the side of Sicily and
Aeolian Lipare, steep with smoking cliffs, whereunder the vaulted and
thunderous Aetnean caverns are hollowed out for Cyclopean forges, the
strong strokes on the anvils echo in groans, ore of steel hisses in the
vaults, and the fire pants in the furnaces: the house of Vulcan, and
Vulcania the land's name. Hither now the Lord of Fire descends from
heaven's height. In the vast cavern the Cyclopes were forging iron,
Brontes and Steropes and Pyracmon with bared limbs. Shaped in their
hands was a thunderbolt, in part already polished, su