He said; and on the chief descends amain, Increased with gore, and swelling with the slain. Then, murmuring from his beds, he boils, he raves, And a foam whitens on the purple waves: At every step, before Achilles stood The crimson surge, and deluged him with blood. Fear touch’d the queen of heaven: she saw dismay’d, She call’d aloud, and summon’d Vulcan’s aid. “Rise to the war! the insulting flood requires Thy wasteful arm! assemble all thy fires! While to their aid, by our command enjoin’d, Rush the swift eastern and the western wind: These from old ocean at my word shall blow, Pour the red torrent on the watery foe, Corses and arms to one bright ruin turn, And hissing rivers to their bottoms burn. Go, mighty in thy rage! display thy power, Drink the whole flood, the crackling trees devour. Scorch all the banks! and (till our voice reclaim) Exert the unwearied furies of the flame!” The power ignipotent her word obeys: Wide o’er the plain he pours the boundless blaze; At once consumes the dead, and dries the soil And the shrunk waters in their channel boil. As when autumnal Boreas sweeps the sky, And instant blows the water’d gardens dry: So look’d the field, so whiten’d was the ground, While Vulcan breathed the fiery blast around. Swift on the sedgy reeds the ruin preys; Along the margin winds the running blaze: The trees in flaming rows to ashes turn, The flowering lotos and the tamarisk burn, Broad elm, and cypress rising in a spire; The watery willows hiss before the fire. Now glow the waves, the fishes pant for breath, The eels lie twisting in the pangs of death: Now flounce aloft, now dive the scaly fry, Or, gasping, turn their bellies to the sky. At length the river rear’d his languid head, And thus, short-panting, to the god he said: “Oh Vulcan! oh! what power resists thy might? I faint, I sink, unequal to the fight— I yield—Let Ilion fall; if fate decree— Ah—bend no more thy fiery arms on me!” He ceased; wide conflagration blazing round; The bubbling waters yield a hissing sound. As when the flames beneath a cauldron rise,[272] To melt the fat of some rich sacrifice, Amid the fierce embrace of circling fires The waters foam, the heavy smoke aspires: So boils the imprison’d flood, forbid to flow, And choked with vapours feels his bottom glow. To Juno then, imperial queen of air, The burning river sends his earnest prayer: “Ah why, Saturnia; must thy son engage Me, only me, with all his wasteful rage? On other gods his dreadful arm employ, For mightier gods assert the cause of Troy. Submissive I desist, if thou command; But ah! withdraw this all-destroying hand. Hear then my solemn oath, to yield to fate Unaided Ilion, and her destined state, Till Greece shall gird her with destructive flame, And in one ruin sink the Trojan name.”