Forge, hammer, tongs, and file

Meaning

Nature tells the bungler to enter her forge within the earth and learn the matter and manner of her work. She then says that she cooks and transforms without hammer, tongs or file. The apparent reversal becomes intelligible when her later speech calls the planets her hammers and the eighth sphere her hands. Ordinary workshop nouns are first invited as images and then denied as literal instruments adequate to her agency. The English preserves both the forge and the negative tool-list. Reading only the cosmic hammers would miss the polemical contrast with human workshop busyness; reading only the denial would lose the governing craft-image.