 Auden's poem is written in two different stanza forms, one form with shorter lines, the other with longer lines.The stanzas with shorter lines describe the making of the shield by the god Hephaestus, and report the scenes that Achilles' mother, the Nereid Thetis, expects to find on the shield and which Hephaestus, in Auden's version, does not make.Thetis expects to find scenes of happiness and peace like those described by Homer.