Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/227

 Down comes the night, and flaps her sable wings over the earth. But Venus, distracted, and not idly, with a mother's cares, disturbed by the menaces of the Laurentines and the violence of the gathering storm, addresses Vulcan, and in the nuptial privacy of their golden chamber     5 begins her speech, breathing in every tone the love that gods feel: "In old days of war, while the Argive kings were desolating Pergamus, their destined prey, and ravaging the towers which were doomed to hostile fire, no help for the sufferers, no arms of thy resourceful workmanship   10 did I ask; no, my dearest lord, I chose not to task thee and thy efforts to no end, large as was my debt to the sons of Priam, and many the tears that I shed for Æneas' cruel agony. Now, by Jove's commands, he has set his foot on Rutulian soil; so, with the past in my      15 mind, I appear as a suppliant, to ask of his power whom I honour most, as a mother may, armour for my son. Thee the daughter of Nereus, thee the spouse of Tithonus, found accessible to tears. See but what nations are mustering, what cities are closing the gate and pointing      20 the steel against me and the lives I love." The speech was ended, and the goddess is fondling her undecided lord on all sides in the soft embrace of her snowy arms. Suddenly he caught the wonted fire, the well-known heat shot to his vitals and threaded his melting frame, even as     25 on a day when the fiery rent burst by the thunderclaps runs with gleaming flash along the veil of cloud. His spouse saw the triumph of her art and felt what beauty can do. Then spoke the stern old god, subdued by everlasting love: "Why fetch your excuses from so far?                      30 whither, my queen, has fled your old affiance in me? had you then been as anxious, even in those old days it had been allowed to give arms to the Trojans; nor was the almighty sire nor the destinies unwilling that Troy should stand and Priam remain in life for ten years more. And          35 now, if war is your object and so your purpose holds, all the care that it lies within my art to promise, what can be wrought out of iron and molten electrum, as far as