Jonathan E. Hoag

“ The wreck of planets, and the crash of suns?
Cyclopic stithies, burning hot with rage,
Shaped thy dark history through every age;
No weakling man unpunished may defy
Those pits of vengeance that beneath thee lie:
For grim Hephaestus' might, once rous'd in ire,
Can fuse the living world with sacred fire!
Yet in thy midnight deeps obscure and cold,
Presumptuous mortals brave the curse of old;
For there midst vault and cleft th' invaders find
Abounding gems, and ores of varied kind:
Hephaestus, seeing, shaketh not his head,
Indulgent to the quest by valor bred. ”