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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1005 ***
+
+HELL
+
+OR THE INFERNO FROM THE DIVINE COMEDY
+
+BY
+Dante Alighieri
+
+Translated by
+THE REV. H. F. CARY, M.A.
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CANTO I.
+ CANTO II.
+ CANTO III.
+ CANTO IV.
+ CANTO V.
+ CANTO VI.
+ CANTO VII.
+ CANTO VIII.
+ CANTO IX.
+ CANTO X.
+ CANTO XI.
+ CANTO XII.
+ CANTO XIII.
+ CANTO XIV.
+ CANTO XV.
+ CANTO XVI.
+ CANTO XVII.
+ CANTO XVIII.
+ CANTO XIX.
+ CANTO XX.
+ CANTO XXI.
+ CANTO XXII.
+ CANTO XXIII.
+ CANTO XXIV.
+ CANTO XXV.
+ CANTO XXVI.
+ CANTO XXVII.
+ CANTO XXVIII.
+ CANTO XXIX.
+ CANTO XXX.
+ CANTO XXXI.
+ CANTO XXXII.
+ CANTO XXXIII.
+ CANTO XXXIV.
+
+
+
+
+HELL
+
+
+
+
+CANTO I
+
+
+In the midway of this our mortal life,
+I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
+Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell
+It were no easy task, how savage wild
+That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
+Which to remember only, my dismay
+Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
+Yet to discourse of what there good befell,
+All else will I relate discover’d there.
+How first I enter’d it I scarce can say,
+Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh’d
+My senses down, when the true path I left,
+But when a mountain’s foot I reach’d, where clos’d
+The valley, that had pierc’d my heart with dread,
+I look’d aloft, and saw his shoulders broad
+Already vested with that planet’s beam,
+Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.
+
+Then was a little respite to the fear,
+That in my heart’s recesses deep had lain,
+All of that night, so pitifully pass’d:
+And as a man, with difficult short breath,
+Forespent with toiling, ’scap’d from sea to shore,
+Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands
+At gaze; e’en so my spirit, that yet fail’d
+Struggling with terror, turn’d to view the straits,
+That none hath pass’d and liv’d. My weary frame
+After short pause recomforted, again
+I journey’d on over that lonely steep,
+
+The hinder foot still firmer. Scarce the ascent
+Began, when, lo! a panther, nimble, light,
+And cover’d with a speckled skin, appear’d,
+Nor, when it saw me, vanish’d, rather strove
+To check my onward going; that ofttimes
+With purpose to retrace my steps I turn’d.
+
+The hour was morning’s prime, and on his way
+Aloft the sun ascended with those stars,
+That with him rose, when Love divine first mov’d
+Those its fair works: so that with joyous hope
+All things conspir’d to fill me, the gay skin
+Of that swift animal, the matin dawn
+And the sweet season. Soon that joy was chas’d,
+And by new dread succeeded, when in view
+A lion came, ’gainst me, as it appear’d,
+
+With his head held aloft and hunger-mad,
+That e’en the air was fear-struck. A she-wolf
+Was at his heels, who in her leanness seem’d
+Full of all wants, and many a land hath made
+Disconsolate ere now. She with such fear
+O’erwhelmed me, at the sight of her appall’d,
+That of the height all hope I lost. As one,
+Who with his gain elated, sees the time
+When all unwares is gone, he inwardly
+Mourns with heart-griping anguish; such was I,
+Haunted by that fell beast, never at peace,
+Who coming o’er against me, by degrees
+Impell’d me where the sun in silence rests.
+
+While to the lower space with backward step
+I fell, my ken discern’d the form one of one,
+Whose voice seem’d faint through long disuse of speech.
+When him in that great desert I espied,
+“Have mercy on me!” cried I out aloud,
+“Spirit! or living man! what e’er thou be!”
+
+He answer’d: “Now not man, man once I was,
+And born of Lombard parents, Mantuana both
+By country, when the power of Julius yet
+Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was past
+Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time
+Of fabled deities and false. A bard
+Was I, and made Anchises’ upright son
+The subject of my song, who came from Troy,
+When the flames prey’d on Ilium’s haughty towers.
+But thou, say wherefore to such perils past
+Return’st thou? wherefore not this pleasant mount
+Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?”
+“And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring,
+From which such copious floods of eloquence
+Have issued?” I with front abash’d replied.
+“Glory and light of all the tuneful train!
+May it avail me that I long with zeal
+Have sought thy volume, and with love immense
+Have conn’d it o’er. My master thou and guide!
+Thou he from whom alone I have deriv’d
+That style, which for its beauty into fame
+Exalts me. See the beast, from whom I fled.
+O save me from her, thou illustrious sage!”
+
+“For every vein and pulse throughout my frame
+She hath made tremble.” He, soon as he saw
+That I was weeping, answer’d, “Thou must needs
+Another way pursue, if thou wouldst ’scape
+From out that savage wilderness. This beast,
+At whom thou criest, her way will suffer none
+To pass, and no less hindrance makes than death:
+So bad and so accursed in her kind,
+That never sated is her ravenous will,
+Still after food more craving than before.
+To many an animal in wedlock vile
+She fastens, and shall yet to many more,
+Until that greyhound come, who shall destroy
+Her with sharp pain. He will not life support
+By earth nor its base metals, but by love,
+Wisdom, and virtue, and his land shall be
+The land ’twixt either Feltro. In his might
+Shall safety to Italia’s plains arise,
+For whose fair realm, Camilla, virgin pure,
+Nisus, Euryalus, and Turnus fell.
+He with incessant chase through every town
+Shall worry, until he to hell at length
+Restore her, thence by envy first let loose.
+I for thy profit pond’ring now devise,
+That thou mayst follow me, and I thy guide
+Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,
+Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see
+Spirits of old tormented, who invoke
+A second death; and those next view, who dwell
+Content in fire, for that they hope to come,
+Whene’er the time may be, among the blest,
+Into whose regions if thou then desire
+T’ ascend, a spirit worthier then I
+Must lead thee, in whose charge, when I depart,
+Thou shalt be left: for that Almighty King,
+Who reigns above, a rebel to his law,
+Adjudges me, and therefore hath decreed,
+That to his city none through me should come.
+He in all parts hath sway; there rules, there holds
+His citadel and throne. O happy those,
+Whom there he chooses!” I to him in few:
+“Bard! by that God, whom thou didst not adore,
+I do beseech thee (that this ill and worse
+I may escape) to lead me, where thou saidst,
+That I Saint Peter’s gate may view, and those
+Who as thou tell’st, are in such dismal plight.”
+
+Onward he mov’d, I close his steps pursu’d.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO II
+
+
+Now was the day departing, and the air,
+Imbrown’d with shadows, from their toils releas’d
+All animals on earth; and I alone
+Prepar’d myself the conflict to sustain,
+Both of sad pity, and that perilous road,
+Which my unerring memory shall retrace.
+
+O Muses! O high genius! now vouchsafe
+Your aid! O mind! that all I saw hast kept
+Safe in a written record, here thy worth
+And eminent endowments come to proof.
+
+I thus began: “Bard! thou who art my guide,
+Consider well, if virtue be in me
+Sufficient, ere to this high enterprise
+Thou trust me. Thou hast told that Silvius’ sire,
+Yet cloth’d in corruptible flesh, among
+Th’ immortal tribes had entrance, and was there
+Sensible present. Yet if heaven’s great Lord,
+Almighty foe to ill, such favour shew’d,
+In contemplation of the high effect,
+Both what and who from him should issue forth,
+It seems in reason’s judgment well deserv’d:
+Sith he of Rome, and of Rome’s empire wide,
+In heaven’s empyreal height was chosen sire:
+Both which, if truth be spoken, were ordain’d
+And ’stablish’d for the holy place, where sits
+Who to great Peter’s sacred chair succeeds.
+He from this journey, in thy song renown’d,
+Learn’d things, that to his victory gave rise
+And to the papal robe. In after-times
+The chosen vessel also travel’d there,
+To bring us back assurance in that faith,
+Which is the entrance to salvation’s way.
+But I, why should I there presume? or who
+Permits it? not, Aeneas I nor Paul.
+Myself I deem not worthy, and none else
+Will deem me. I, if on this voyage then
+I venture, fear it will in folly end.
+Thou, who art wise, better my meaning know’st,
+Than I can speak.” As one, who unresolves
+What he hath late resolv’d, and with new thoughts
+Changes his purpose, from his first intent
+Remov’d; e’en such was I on that dun coast,
+Wasting in thought my enterprise, at first
+So eagerly embrac’d. “If right thy words
+I scan,” replied that shade magnanimous,
+“Thy soul is by vile fear assail’d, which oft
+So overcasts a man, that he recoils
+From noblest resolution, like a beast
+At some false semblance in the twilight gloom.
+That from this terror thou mayst free thyself,
+I will instruct thee why I came, and what
+I heard in that same instant, when for thee
+Grief touch’d me first. I was among the tribe,
+Who rest suspended, when a dame, so blest
+And lovely, I besought her to command,
+Call’d me; her eyes were brighter than the star
+Of day; and she with gentle voice and soft
+Angelically tun’d her speech address’d:
+“O courteous shade of Mantua! thou whose fame
+Yet lives, and shall live long as nature lasts!
+A friend, not of my fortune but myself,
+On the wide desert in his road has met
+Hindrance so great, that he through fear has turn’d.
+Now much I dread lest he past help have stray’d,
+And I be ris’n too late for his relief,
+From what in heaven of him I heard. Speed now,
+And by thy eloquent persuasive tongue,
+And by all means for his deliverance meet,
+Assist him. So to me will comfort spring.
+I who now bid thee on this errand forth
+Am Beatrice; from a place I come
+Revisited with joy. Love brought me thence,
+Who prompts my speech. When in my Master’s sight
+I stand, thy praise to him I oft will tell.”
+
+(Note: Beatrice. I use this word, as it is
+pronounced in the Italian, as consisting of four
+syllables, of which the third is a long one.)
+
+
+She then was silent, and I thus began:
+“O Lady! by whose influence alone,
+Mankind excels whatever is contain’d
+Within that heaven which hath the smallest orb,
+So thy command delights me, that to obey,
+If it were done already, would seem late.
+No need hast thou farther to speak thy will;
+Yet tell the reason, why thou art not loth
+To leave that ample space, where to return
+Thou burnest, for this centre here beneath.”
+
+She then: “Since thou so deeply wouldst inquire,
+I will instruct thee briefly, why no dread
+Hinders my entrance here. Those things alone
+Are to be fear’d, whence evil may proceed,
+None else, for none are terrible beside.
+I am so fram’d by God, thanks to his grace!
+That any suff’rance of your misery
+Touches me not, nor flame of that fierce fire
+Assails me. In high heaven a blessed dame
+Besides, who mourns with such effectual grief
+That hindrance, which I send thee to remove,
+That God’s stern judgment to her will inclines.”
+To Lucia calling, her she thus bespake:
+“Now doth thy faithful servant need thy aid
+And I commend him to thee.” At her word
+Sped Lucia, of all cruelty the foe,
+And coming to the place, where I abode
+Seated with Rachel, her of ancient days,
+She thus address’d me: “Thou true praise of God!
+Beatrice! why is not thy succour lent
+To him, who so much lov’d thee, as to leave
+For thy sake all the multitude admires?
+Dost thou not hear how pitiful his wail,
+Nor mark the death, which in the torrent flood,
+Swoln mightier than a sea, him struggling holds?”
+“Ne’er among men did any with such speed
+Haste to their profit, flee from their annoy,
+As when these words were spoken, I came here,
+Down from my blessed seat, trusting the force
+Of thy pure eloquence, which thee, and all
+Who well have mark’d it, into honour brings.”
+
+“When she had ended, her bright beaming eyes
+Tearful she turn’d aside; whereat I felt
+Redoubled zeal to serve thee. As she will’d,
+Thus am I come: I sav’d thee from the beast,
+Who thy near way across the goodly mount
+Prevented. What is this comes o’er thee then?
+Why, why dost thou hang back? why in thy breast
+Harbour vile fear? why hast not courage there
+And noble daring? Since three maids so blest
+Thy safety plan, e’en in the court of heaven;
+And so much certain good my words forebode.”
+
+As florets, by the frosty air of night
+Bent down and clos’d, when day has blanch’d their leaves,
+Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems;
+So was my fainting vigour new restor’d,
+And to my heart such kindly courage ran,
+That I as one undaunted soon replied:
+“O full of pity she, who undertook
+My succour! and thou kind who didst perform
+So soon her true behest! With such desire
+Thou hast dispos’d me to renew my voyage,
+That my first purpose fully is resum’d.
+Lead on: one only will is in us both.
+Thou art my guide, my master thou, and lord.”
+
+So spake I; and when he had onward mov’d,
+I enter’d on the deep and woody way.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO III
+
+
+“Through me you pass into the city of woe:
+Through me you pass into eternal pain:
+Through me among the people lost for aye.
+Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d:
+To rear me was the task of power divine,
+Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
+Before me things create were none, save things
+Eternal, and eternal I endure.
+
+“All hope abandon ye who enter here.”
+
+Such characters in colour dim I mark’d
+Over a portal’s lofty arch inscrib’d:
+Whereat I thus: “Master, these words import
+Hard meaning.” He as one prepar’d replied:
+“Here thou must all distrust behind thee leave;
+Here be vile fear extinguish’d. We are come
+Where I have told thee we shall see the souls
+To misery doom’d, who intellectual good
+Have lost.” And when his hand he had stretch’d forth
+To mine, with pleasant looks, whence I was cheer’d,
+Into that secret place he led me on.
+
+Here sighs with lamentations and loud moans
+Resounded through the air pierc’d by no star,
+That e’en I wept at entering. Various tongues,
+Horrible languages, outcries of woe,
+Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse,
+With hands together smote that swell’d the sounds,
+Made up a tumult, that for ever whirls
+Round through that air with solid darkness stain’d,
+Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies.
+
+I then, with error yet encompass’d, cried:
+“O master! What is this I hear? What race
+Are these, who seem so overcome with woe?”
+
+He thus to me: “This miserable fate
+Suffer the wretched souls of those, who liv’d
+Without or praise or blame, with that ill band
+Of angels mix’d, who nor rebellious prov’d
+Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves
+Were only. From his bounds Heaven drove them forth,
+Not to impair his lustre, nor the depth
+Of Hell receives them, lest th’ accursed tribe
+Should glory thence with exultation vain.”
+
+I then: “Master! what doth aggrieve them thus,
+That they lament so loud?” He straight replied:
+“That will I tell thee briefly. These of death
+No hope may entertain: and their blind life
+So meanly passes, that all other lots
+They envy. Fame of them the world hath none,
+Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both.
+Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.”
+
+And I, who straightway look’d, beheld a flag,
+Which whirling ran around so rapidly,
+That it no pause obtain’d: and following came
+Such a long train of spirits, I should ne’er
+Have thought, that death so many had despoil’d.
+
+When some of these I recogniz’d, I saw
+And knew the shade of him, who to base fear
+Yielding, abjur’d his high estate. Forthwith
+I understood for certain this the tribe
+Of those ill spirits both to God displeasing
+And to his foes. These wretches, who ne’er lived,
+Went on in nakedness, and sorely stung
+By wasps and hornets, which bedew’d their cheeks
+With blood, that mix’d with tears dropp’d to their feet,
+And by disgustful worms was gather’d there.
+
+Then looking farther onwards I beheld
+A throng upon the shore of a great stream:
+Whereat I thus: “Sir! grant me now to know
+Whom here we view, and whence impell’d they seem
+So eager to pass o’er, as I discern
+Through the blear light?” He thus to me in few:
+“This shalt thou know, soon as our steps arrive
+Beside the woeful tide of Acheron.”
+
+Then with eyes downward cast and fill’d with shame,
+Fearing my words offensive to his ear,
+Till we had reach’d the river, I from speech
+Abstain’d. And lo! toward us in a bark
+Comes on an old man hoary white with eld,
+
+Crying, “Woe to you wicked spirits! hope not
+Ever to see the sky again. I come
+To take you to the other shore across,
+Into eternal darkness, there to dwell
+In fierce heat and in ice. And thou, who there
+Standest, live spirit! get thee hence, and leave
+These who are dead.” But soon as he beheld
+I left them not, “By other way,” said he,
+“By other haven shalt thou come to shore,
+Not by this passage; thee a nimbler boat
+Must carry.” Then to him thus spake my guide:
+“Charon! thyself torment not: so ’t is will’d,
+Where will and power are one: ask thou no more.”
+
+Straightway in silence fell the shaggy cheeks
+Of him the boatman o’er the livid lake,
+Around whose eyes glar’d wheeling flames. Meanwhile
+Those spirits, faint and naked, color chang’d,
+And gnash’d their teeth, soon as the cruel words
+They heard. God and their parents they blasphem’d,
+The human kind, the place, the time, and seed
+That did engender them and give them birth.
+
+Then all together sorely wailing drew
+To the curs’d strand, that every man must pass
+Who fears not God. Charon, demoniac form,
+With eyes of burning coal, collects them all,
+Beck’ning, and each, that lingers, with his oar
+Strikes. As fall off the light autumnal leaves,
+One still another following, till the bough
+Strews all its honours on the earth beneath;
+
+E’en in like manner Adam’s evil brood
+Cast themselves one by one down from the shore,
+Each at a beck, as falcon at his call.
+
+Thus go they over through the umber’d wave,
+And ever they on the opposing bank
+Be landed, on this side another throng
+Still gathers. “Son,” thus spake the courteous guide,
+“Those, who die subject to the wrath of God,
+All here together come from every clime,
+And to o’erpass the river are not loth:
+For so heaven’s justice goads them on, that fear
+Is turn’d into desire. Hence ne’er hath past
+Good spirit. If of thee Charon complain,
+Now mayst thou know the import of his words.”
+
+This said, the gloomy region trembling shook
+So terribly, that yet with clammy dews
+Fear chills my brow. The sad earth gave a blast,
+That, lightening, shot forth a vermilion flame,
+Which all my senses conquer’d quite, and I
+Down dropp’d, as one with sudden slumber seiz’d.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO IV
+
+
+Broke the deep slumber in my brain a crash
+Of heavy thunder, that I shook myself,
+As one by main force rous’d. Risen upright,
+My rested eyes I mov’d around, and search’d
+With fixed ken to know what place it was,
+Wherein I stood. For certain on the brink
+I found me of the lamentable vale,
+The dread abyss, that joins a thund’rous sound
+Of plaints innumerable. Dark and deep,
+And thick with clouds o’erspread, mine eye in vain
+Explor’d its bottom, nor could aught discern.
+
+“Now let us to the blind world there beneath
+Descend;” the bard began all pale of look:
+“I go the first, and thou shalt follow next.”
+
+Then I his alter’d hue perceiving, thus:
+“How may I speed, if thou yieldest to dread,
+Who still art wont to comfort me in doubt?”
+
+He then: “The anguish of that race below
+With pity stains my cheek, which thou for fear
+Mistakest. Let us on. Our length of way
+Urges to haste.” Onward, this said, he mov’d;
+And ent’ring led me with him on the bounds
+Of the first circle, that surrounds th’ abyss.
+Here, as mine ear could note, no plaint was heard
+Except of sighs, that made th’ eternal air
+Tremble, not caus’d by tortures, but from grief
+Felt by those multitudes, many and vast,
+Of men, women, and infants. Then to me
+The gentle guide: “Inquir’st thou not what spirits
+Are these, which thou beholdest? Ere thou pass
+Farther, I would thou know, that these of sin
+Were blameless; and if aught they merited,
+It profits not, since baptism was not theirs,
+The portal to thy faith. If they before
+The Gospel liv’d, they serv’d not God aright;
+And among such am I. For these defects,
+And for no other evil, we are lost;”
+
+“Only so far afflicted, that we live
+Desiring without hope.” So grief assail’d
+My heart at hearing this, for well I knew
+Suspended in that Limbo many a soul
+Of mighty worth. “O tell me, sire rever’d!
+Tell me, my master!” I began through wish
+Of full assurance in that holy faith,
+Which vanquishes all error; “say, did e’er
+Any, or through his own or other’s merit,
+Come forth from thence, whom afterward was blest?”
+
+Piercing the secret purport of my speech,
+He answer’d: “I was new to that estate,
+When I beheld a puissant one arrive
+Amongst us, with victorious trophy crown’d.
+He forth the shade of our first parent drew,
+Abel his child, and Noah righteous man,
+Of Moses lawgiver for faith approv’d,
+Of patriarch Abraham, and David king,
+Israel with his sire and with his sons,
+Nor without Rachel whom so hard he won,
+And others many more, whom he to bliss
+Exalted. Before these, be thou assur’d,
+No spirit of human kind was ever sav’d.”
+
+We, while he spake, ceas’d not our onward road,
+Still passing through the wood; for so I name
+Those spirits thick beset. We were not far
+On this side from the summit, when I kenn’d
+A flame, that o’er the darken’d hemisphere
+Prevailing shin’d. Yet we a little space
+Were distant, not so far but I in part
+Discover’d, that a tribe in honour high
+That place possess’d. “O thou, who every art
+And science valu’st! who are these, that boast
+Such honour, separate from all the rest?”
+
+He answer’d: “The renown of their great names
+That echoes through your world above, acquires
+Favour in heaven, which holds them thus advanc’d.”
+Meantime a voice I heard: “Honour the bard
+Sublime! his shade returns that left us late!”
+No sooner ceas’d the sound, than I beheld
+Four mighty spirits toward us bend their steps,
+Of semblance neither sorrowful nor glad.
+
+When thus my master kind began: “Mark him,
+Who in his right hand bears that falchion keen,
+The other three preceding, as their lord.
+This is that Homer, of all bards supreme:
+Flaccus the next in satire’s vein excelling;
+The third is Naso; Lucan is the last.
+Because they all that appellation own,
+With which the voice singly accosted me,
+Honouring they greet me thus, and well they judge.”
+
+So I beheld united the bright school
+Of him the monarch of sublimest song,
+That o’er the others like an eagle soars.
+When they together short discourse had held,
+They turn’d to me, with salutation kind
+Beck’ning me; at the which my master smil’d:
+Nor was this all; but greater honour still
+They gave me, for they made me of their tribe;
+And I was sixth amid so learn’d a band.
+
+Far as the luminous beacon on we pass’d
+Speaking of matters, then befitting well
+To speak, now fitter left untold. At foot
+Of a magnificent castle we arriv’d,
+Seven times with lofty walls begirt, and round
+Defended by a pleasant stream. O’er this
+As o’er dry land we pass’d. Next through seven gates
+I with those sages enter’d, and we came
+Into a mead with lively verdure fresh.
+
+There dwelt a race, who slow their eyes around
+Majestically mov’d, and in their port
+Bore eminent authority; they spake
+Seldom, but all their words were tuneful sweet.
+
+We to one side retir’d, into a place
+Open and bright and lofty, whence each one
+Stood manifest to view. Incontinent
+There on the green enamel of the plain
+Were shown me the great spirits, by whose sight
+I am exalted in my own esteem.
+
+Electra there I saw accompanied
+By many, among whom Hector I knew,
+Anchises’ pious son, and with hawk’s eye
+Caesar all arm’d, and by Camilla there
+Penthesilea. On the other side
+Old King Latinus, seated by his child
+Lavinia, and that Brutus I beheld,
+Who Tarquin chas’d, Lucretia, Cato’s wife
+Marcia, with Julia and Cornelia there;
+And sole apart retir’d, the Soldan fierce.
+
+Then when a little more I rais’d my brow,
+I spied the master of the sapient throng,
+Seated amid the philosophic train.
+Him all admire, all pay him rev’rence due.
+There Socrates and Plato both I mark’d,
+Nearest to him in rank; Democritus,
+Who sets the world at chance, Diogenes,
+With Heraclitus, and Empedocles,
+And Anaxagoras, and Thales sage,
+Zeno, and Dioscorides well read
+In nature’s secret lore. Orpheus I mark’d
+And Linus, Tully and moral Seneca,
+Euclid and Ptolemy, Hippocrates,
+Galenus, Avicen, and him who made
+That commentary vast, Averroes.
+
+Of all to speak at full were vain attempt;
+For my wide theme so urges, that ofttimes
+My words fall short of what bechanc’d. In two
+The six associates part. Another way
+My sage guide leads me, from that air serene,
+Into a climate ever vex’d with storms:
+And to a part I come where no light shines.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO V
+
+
+From the first circle I descended thus
+Down to the second, which, a lesser space
+Embracing, so much more of grief contains
+Provoking bitter moans. There, Minos stands
+Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all
+Who enter, strict examining the crimes,
+
+Gives sentence, and dismisses them beneath,
+According as he foldeth him around:
+For when before him comes th’ ill fated soul,
+It all confesses; and that judge severe
+Of sins, considering what place in hell
+Suits the transgression, with his tail so oft
+Himself encircles, as degrees beneath
+He dooms it to descend. Before him stand
+Always a num’rous throng; and in his turn
+Each one to judgment passing, speaks, and hears
+His fate, thence downward to his dwelling hurl’d.
+
+“O thou! who to this residence of woe
+Approachest?” when he saw me coming, cried
+Minos, relinquishing his dread employ,
+“Look how thou enter here; beware in whom
+Thou place thy trust; let not the entrance broad
+Deceive thee to thy harm.” To him my guide:
+“Wherefore exclaimest? Hinder not his way
+By destiny appointed; so ’tis will’d
+Where will and power are one. Ask thou no more.”
+
+Now ’gin the rueful wailings to be heard.
+Now am I come where many a plaining voice
+Smites on mine ear. Into a place I came
+Where light was silent all. Bellowing there groan’d
+A noise as of a sea in tempest torn
+By warring winds. The stormy blast of hell
+With restless fury drives the spirits on
+Whirl’d round and dash’d amain with sore annoy.
+
+When they arrive before the ruinous sweep,
+There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans,
+And blasphemies ’gainst the good Power in heaven.
+
+I understood that to this torment sad
+The carnal sinners are condemn’d, in whom
+Reason by lust is sway’d. As in large troops
+And multitudinous, when winter reigns,
+The starlings on their wings are borne abroad;
+So bears the tyrannous gust those evil souls.
+On this side and on that, above, below,
+It drives them: hope of rest to solace them
+Is none, nor e’en of milder pang. As cranes,
+Chanting their dol’rous notes, traverse the sky,
+Stretch’d out in long array: so I beheld
+Spirits, who came loud wailing, hurried on
+By their dire doom. Then I: “Instructor! who
+Are these, by the black air so scourg’d?”—“The first
+’Mong those, of whom thou question’st,” he replied,
+“O’er many tongues was empress. She in vice
+Of luxury was so shameless, that she made
+Liking be lawful by promulg’d decree,
+To clear the blame she had herself incurr’d.
+This is Semiramis, of whom ’tis writ,
+That she succeeded Ninus her espous’d;
+And held the land, which now the Soldan rules.
+The next in amorous fury slew herself,
+And to Sicheus’ ashes broke her faith:
+Then follows Cleopatra, lustful queen.”
+
+There mark’d I Helen, for whose sake so long
+The time was fraught with evil; there the great
+Achilles, who with love fought to the end.
+Paris I saw, and Tristan; and beside
+A thousand more he show’d me, and by name
+Pointed them out, whom love bereav’d of life.
+
+When I had heard my sage instructor name
+Those dames and knights of antique days, o’erpower’d
+By pity, well-nigh in amaze my mind
+Was lost; and I began: “Bard! willingly
+I would address those two together coming,
+Which seem so light before the wind.” He thus:
+“Note thou, when nearer they to us approach.”
+
+“Then by that love which carries them along,
+Entreat; and they will come.” Soon as the wind
+Sway’d them toward us, I thus fram’d my speech:
+“O wearied spirits! come, and hold discourse
+With us, if by none else restrain’d.” As doves
+By fond desire invited, on wide wings
+And firm, to their sweet nest returning home,
+Cleave the air, wafted by their will along;
+Thus issu’d from that troop, where Dido ranks,
+They through the ill air speeding; with such force
+My cry prevail’d by strong affection urg’d.
+
+“O gracious creature and benign! who go’st
+Visiting, through this element obscure,
+Us, who the world with bloody stain imbru’d;
+If for a friend the King of all we own’d,
+Our pray’r to him should for thy peace arise,
+Since thou hast pity on our evil plight.
+()f whatsoe’er to hear or to discourse
+It pleases thee, that will we hear, of that
+Freely with thee discourse, while e’er the wind,
+As now, is mute. The land, that gave me birth,
+Is situate on the coast, where Po descends
+To rest in ocean with his sequent streams.
+
+“Love, that in gentle heart is quickly learnt,
+Entangled him by that fair form, from me
+Ta’en in such cruel sort, as grieves me still:
+Love, that denial takes from none belov’d,
+Caught me with pleasing him so passing well,
+That, as thou see’st, he yet deserts me not.
+
+“Love brought us to one death: Caina waits
+The soul, who spilt our life.” Such were their words;
+At hearing which downward I bent my looks,
+And held them there so long, that the bard cried:
+“What art thou pond’ring?” I in answer thus:
+“Alas! by what sweet thoughts, what fond desire
+Must they at length to that ill pass have reach’d!”
+
+Then turning, I to them my speech address’d.
+And thus began: “Francesca! your sad fate
+Even to tears my grief and pity moves.
+But tell me; in the time of your sweet sighs,
+By what, and how love granted, that ye knew
+Your yet uncertain wishes?” She replied:
+“No greater grief than to remember days
+Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand! That kens
+Thy learn’d instructor. Yet so eagerly
+If thou art bent to know the primal root,
+From whence our love gat being, I will do,
+As one, who weeps and tells his tale. One day
+For our delight we read of Lancelot,
+How him love thrall’d. Alone we were, and no
+Suspicion near us. Ofttimes by that reading
+Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue
+Fled from our alter’d cheek. But at one point
+Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,
+The wished smile, rapturously kiss’d
+By one so deep in love, then he, who ne’er
+From me shall separate, at once my lips
+All trembling kiss’d. The book and writer both
+Were love’s purveyors. In its leaves that day
+We read no more.” While thus one spirit spake,
+The other wail’d so sorely, that heartstruck
+I through compassion fainting, seem’d not far
+From death, and like a corpse fell to the ground.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO VI
+
+
+My sense reviving, that erewhile had droop’d
+With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief
+O’ercame me wholly, straight around I see
+New torments, new tormented souls, which way
+Soe’er I move, or turn, or bend my sight.
+In the third circle I arrive, of show’rs
+Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang’d
+For ever, both in kind and in degree.
+Large hail, discolour’d water, sleety flaw
+Through the dun midnight air stream’d down amain:
+Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell.
+
+Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange,
+Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog
+Over the multitude immers’d beneath.
+His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard,
+His belly large, and claw’d the hands, with which
+He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs
+Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs,
+Under the rainy deluge, with one side
+The other screening, oft they roll them round,
+A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm
+Descried us, savage Cerberus, he op’d
+His jaws, and the fangs show’d us; not a limb
+Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms
+Expanding on the ground, thence filled with earth
+Rais’d them, and cast it in his ravenous maw.
+
+E’en as a dog, that yelling bays for food
+His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall
+His fury, bent alone with eager haste
+To swallow it; so dropp’d the loathsome cheeks
+Of demon Cerberus, who thund’ring stuns
+The spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain.
+
+We, o’er the shades thrown prostrate by the brunt
+Of the heavy tempest passing, set our feet
+Upon their emptiness, that substance seem’d.
+
+They all along the earth extended lay
+Save one, that sudden rais’d himself to sit,
+Soon as that way he saw us pass. “O thou!”
+He cried, “who through the infernal shades art led,
+Own, if again thou know’st me. Thou wast fram’d
+Or ere my frame was broken.” I replied:
+“The anguish thou endur’st perchance so takes
+Thy form from my remembrance, that it seems
+As if I saw thee never. But inform
+Me who thou art, that in a place so sad
+Art set, and in such torment, that although
+Other be greater, more disgustful none
+Can be imagin’d.” He in answer thus:
+
+“Thy city heap’d with envy to the brim,
+Ay that the measure overflows its bounds,
+Held me in brighter days. Ye citizens
+Were wont to name me Ciacco. For the sin
+Of glutt’ny, damned vice, beneath this rain,
+E’en as thou see’st, I with fatigue am worn;
+Nor I sole spirit in this woe: all these
+Have by like crime incurr’d like punishment.”
+
+No more he said, and I my speech resum’d:
+“Ciacco! thy dire affliction grieves me much,
+Even to tears. But tell me, if thou know’st,
+What shall at length befall the citizens
+Of the divided city; whether any just one
+Inhabit there: and tell me of the cause,
+Whence jarring discord hath assail’d it thus?”
+
+He then: “After long striving they will come
+To blood; and the wild party from the woods
+Will chase the other with much injury forth.
+Then it behoves, that this must fall, within
+Three solar circles; and the other rise
+By borrow’d force of one, who under shore
+Now rests. It shall a long space hold aloof
+Its forehead, keeping under heavy weight
+The other oppress’d, indignant at the load,
+And grieving sore. The just are two in number,
+But they neglected. Av’rice, envy, pride,
+Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all
+On fire.” Here ceas’d the lamentable sound;
+And I continu’d thus: “Still would I learn
+More from thee, farther parley still entreat.
+Of Farinata and Tegghiaio say,
+They who so well deserv’d, of Giacopo,
+Arrigo, Mosca, and the rest, who bent
+Their minds on working good. Oh! tell me where
+They bide, and to their knowledge let me come.
+For I am press’d with keen desire to hear,
+If heaven’s sweet cup or poisonous drug of hell
+Be to their lip assign’d.” He answer’d straight:
+“These are yet blacker spirits. Various crimes
+Have sunk them deeper in the dark abyss.
+If thou so far descendest, thou mayst see them.
+But to the pleasant world when thou return’st,
+Of me make mention, I entreat thee, there.
+No more I tell thee, answer thee no more.”
+
+This said, his fixed eyes he turn’d askance,
+A little ey’d me, then bent down his head,
+And ’midst his blind companions with it fell.
+
+When thus my guide: “No more his bed he leaves,
+Ere the last angel-trumpet blow. The Power
+Adverse to these shall then in glory come,
+Each one forthwith to his sad tomb repair,
+Resume his fleshly vesture and his form,
+And hear the eternal doom re-echoing rend
+The vault.” So pass’d we through that mixture foul
+Of spirits and rain, with tardy steps; meanwhile
+Touching, though slightly, on the life to come.
+For thus I question’d: “Shall these tortures, Sir!
+When the great sentence passes, be increas’d,
+Or mitigated, or as now severe?”
+
+He then: “Consult thy knowledge; that decides
+That as each thing to more perfection grows,
+It feels more sensibly both good and pain.
+Though ne’er to true perfection may arrive
+This race accurs’d, yet nearer then than now
+They shall approach it.” Compassing that path
+Circuitous we journeyed, and discourse
+Much more than I relate between us pass’d:
+Till at the point, where the steps led below,
+Arriv’d, there Plutus, the great foe, we found.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO VII
+
+
+“Ah me! O Satan! Satan!” loud exclaim’d
+Plutus, in accent hoarse of wild alarm:
+And the kind sage, whom no event surpris’d,
+To comfort me thus spake: “Let not thy fear
+Harm thee, for power in him, be sure, is none
+To hinder down this rock thy safe descent.”
+Then to that sworn lip turning, “Peace!” he cried,
+
+“Curs’d wolf! thy fury inward on thyself
+Prey, and consume thee! Through the dark profound
+Not without cause he passes. So ’t is will’d
+On high, there where the great Archangel pour’d
+Heav’n’s vengeance on the first adulterer proud.”
+
+As sails full spread and bellying with the wind
+Drop suddenly collaps’d, if the mast split;
+So to the ground down dropp’d the cruel fiend.
+
+Thus we, descending to the fourth steep ledge,
+Gain’d on the dismal shore, that all the woe
+Hems in of all the universe. Ah me!
+Almighty Justice! in what store thou heap’st
+New pains, new troubles, as I here beheld!
+Wherefore doth fault of ours bring us to this?
+
+E’en as a billow, on Charybdis rising,
+Against encounter’d billow dashing breaks;
+Such is the dance this wretched race must lead,
+Whom more than elsewhere numerous here I found,
+From one side and the other, with loud voice,
+Both roll’d on weights by main forge of their breasts,
+Then smote together, and each one forthwith
+Roll’d them back voluble, turning again,
+Exclaiming these, “Why holdest thou so fast?”
+Those answering, “And why castest thou away?”
+So still repeating their despiteful song,
+They to the opposite point on either hand
+Travers’d the horrid circle: then arriv’d,
+Both turn’d them round, and through the middle space
+Conflicting met again. At sight whereof
+I, stung with grief, thus spake: “O say, my guide!
+What race is this? Were these, whose heads are shorn,
+On our left hand, all sep’rate to the church?”
+
+He straight replied: “In their first life these all
+In mind were so distorted, that they made,
+According to due measure, of their wealth,
+No use. This clearly from their words collect,
+Which they howl forth, at each extremity
+Arriving of the circle, where their crime
+Contrary’ in kind disparts them. To the church
+Were separate those, that with no hairy cowls
+Are crown’d, both Popes and Cardinals, o’er whom
+Av’rice dominion absolute maintains.”
+
+I then: “Mid such as these some needs must be,
+Whom I shall recognize, that with the blot
+Of these foul sins were stain’d.” He answering thus:
+“Vain thought conceiv’st thou. That ignoble life,
+Which made them vile before, now makes them dark,
+And to all knowledge indiscernible.
+Forever they shall meet in this rude shock:
+These from the tomb with clenched grasp shall rise,
+Those with close-shaven locks. That ill they gave,
+And ill they kept, hath of the beauteous world
+Depriv’d, and set them at this strife, which needs
+No labour’d phrase of mine to set if off.
+Now may’st thou see, my son! how brief, how vain,
+The goods committed into fortune’s hands,
+For which the human race keep such a coil!
+Not all the gold, that is beneath the moon,
+Or ever hath been, of these toil-worn souls
+Might purchase rest for one.” I thus rejoin’d:
+
+“My guide! of thee this also would I learn;
+This fortune, that thou speak’st of, what it is,
+Whose talons grasp the blessings of the world?”
+
+He thus: “O beings blind! what ignorance
+Besets you? Now my judgment hear and mark.
+He, whose transcendent wisdom passes all,
+The heavens creating, gave them ruling powers
+To guide them, so that each part shines to each,
+Their light in equal distribution pour’d.
+By similar appointment he ordain’d
+Over the world’s bright images to rule.
+Superintendence of a guiding hand
+And general minister, which at due time
+May change the empty vantages of life
+From race to race, from one to other’s blood,
+Beyond prevention of man’s wisest care:
+Wherefore one nation rises into sway,
+Another languishes, e’en as her will
+Decrees, from us conceal’d, as in the grass
+The serpent train. Against her nought avails
+Your utmost wisdom. She with foresight plans,
+Judges, and carries on her reign, as theirs
+The other powers divine. Her changes know
+Nore intermission: by necessity
+She is made swift, so frequent come who claim
+Succession in her favours. This is she,
+So execrated e’en by those, whose debt
+To her is rather praise; they wrongfully
+With blame requite her, and with evil word;
+But she is blessed, and for that recks not:
+Amidst the other primal beings glad
+Rolls on her sphere, and in her bliss exults.
+Now on our way pass we, to heavier woe
+Descending: for each star is falling now,
+That mounted at our entrance, and forbids
+Too long our tarrying.” We the circle cross’d
+To the next steep, arriving at a well,
+That boiling pours itself down to a foss
+Sluic’d from its source. Far murkier was the wave
+Than sablest grain: and we in company
+Of the’ inky waters, journeying by their side,
+Enter’d, though by a different track, beneath.
+Into a lake, the Stygian nam’d, expands
+The dismal stream, when it hath reach’d the foot
+Of the grey wither’d cliffs. Intent I stood
+To gaze, and in the marish sunk descried
+A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks
+Betok’ning rage. They with their hands alone
+Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet,
+Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs.
+
+The good instructor spake; “Now seest thou, son!
+The souls of those, whom anger overcame.
+This too for certain know, that underneath
+The water dwells a multitude, whose sighs
+Into these bubbles make the surface heave,
+As thine eye tells thee wheresoe’er it turn.”
+Fix’d in the slime they say: “Sad once were we
+In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun,
+Carrying a foul and lazy mist within:
+Now in these murky settlings are we sad.”
+Such dolorous strain they gurgle in their throats.
+But word distinct can utter none.” Our route
+Thus compass’d we, a segment widely stretch’d
+Between the dry embankment, and the core
+Of the loath’d pool, turning meanwhile our eyes
+Downward on those who gulp’d its muddy lees;
+Nor stopp’d, till to a tower’s low base we came.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO VIII
+
+
+My theme pursuing, I relate that ere
+We reach’d the lofty turret’s base, our eyes
+Its height ascended, where two cressets hung
+We mark’d, and from afar another light
+Return the signal, so remote, that scarce
+The eye could catch its beam. I turning round
+To the deep source of knowledge, thus inquir’d:
+“Say what this means? and what that other light
+In answer set? what agency doth this?”
+
+“There on the filthy waters,” he replied,
+“E’en now what next awaits us mayst thou see,
+If the marsh-gender’d fog conceal it not.”
+
+Never was arrow from the cord dismiss’d,
+That ran its way so nimbly through the air,
+As a small bark, that through the waves I spied
+Toward us coming, under the sole sway
+Of one that ferried it, who cried aloud:
+“Art thou arriv’d, fell spirit?”—“Phlegyas, Phlegyas,
+This time thou criest in vain,” my lord replied;
+“No longer shalt thou have us, but while o’er
+The slimy pool we pass.” As one who hears
+Of some great wrong he hath sustain’d, whereat
+Inly he pines; so Phlegyas inly pin’d
+In his fierce ire. My guide descending stepp’d
+Into the skiff, and bade me enter next
+Close at his side; nor till my entrance seem’d
+The vessel freighted. Soon as both embark’d,
+Cutting the waves, goes on the ancient prow,
+More deeply than with others it is wont.
+
+While we our course o’er the dead channel held.
+One drench’d in mire before me came, and said;
+“Who art thou, that thou comest ere thine hour?”
+
+I answer’d: “Though I come, I tarry not;
+But who art thou, that art become so foul?”
+
+“One, as thou seest, who mourn:” he straight replied.
+
+To which I thus: “In mourning and in woe,
+Curs’d spirit! tarry thou.g I know thee well,
+E’en thus in filth disguis’d.” Then stretch’d he forth
+Hands to the bark; whereof my teacher sage
+Aware, thrusting him back: “Away! down there;
+
+“To the’ other dogs!” then, with his arms my neck
+Encircling, kiss’d my cheek, and spake: “O soul
+Justly disdainful! blest was she in whom
+Thou was conceiv’d! He in the world was one
+For arrogance noted; to his memory
+No virtue lends its lustre; even so
+Here is his shadow furious. There above
+How many now hold themselves mighty kings
+Who here like swine shall wallow in the mire,
+Leaving behind them horrible dispraise!”
+
+I then: “Master! him fain would I behold
+Whelm’d in these dregs, before we quit the lake.”
+
+He thus: “Or ever to thy view the shore
+Be offer’d, satisfied shall be that wish,
+Which well deserves completion.” Scarce his words
+Were ended, when I saw the miry tribes
+Set on him with such violence, that yet
+For that render I thanks to God and praise
+“To Filippo Argenti:” cried they all:
+And on himself the moody Florentine
+Turn’d his avenging fangs. Him here we left,
+Nor speak I of him more. But on mine ear
+Sudden a sound of lamentation smote,
+Whereat mine eye unbarr’d I sent abroad.
+
+And thus the good instructor: “Now, my son!
+Draws near the city, that of Dis is nam’d,
+With its grave denizens, a mighty throng.”
+
+I thus: “The minarets already, Sir!
+There certes in the valley I descry,
+Gleaming vermilion, as if they from fire
+Had issu’d.” He replied: “Eternal fire,
+That inward burns, shows them with ruddy flame
+Illum’d; as in this nether hell thou seest.”
+
+We came within the fosses deep, that moat
+This region comfortless. The walls appear’d
+As they were fram’d of iron. We had made
+Wide circuit, ere a place we reach’d, where loud
+The mariner cried vehement: “Go forth!
+The’ entrance is here!” Upon the gates I spied
+More than a thousand, who of old from heaven
+Were hurl’d. With ireful gestures, “Who is this,”
+They cried, “that without death first felt, goes through
+The regions of the dead?” My sapient guide
+Made sign that he for secret parley wish’d;
+Whereat their angry scorn abating, thus
+They spake: “Come thou alone; and let him go
+Who hath so hardily enter’d this realm.
+Alone return he by his witless way;
+If well he know it, let him prove. For thee,
+Here shalt thou tarry, who through clime so dark
+Hast been his escort.” Now bethink thee, reader!
+What cheer was mine at sound of those curs’d words.
+I did believe I never should return.
+
+“O my lov’d guide! who more than seven times
+Security hast render’d me, and drawn
+From peril deep, whereto I stood expos’d,
+Desert me not,” I cried, “in this extreme.
+And if our onward going be denied,
+Together trace we back our steps with speed.”
+
+My liege, who thither had conducted me,
+Replied: “Fear not: for of our passage none
+Hath power to disappoint us, by such high
+Authority permitted. But do thou
+Expect me here; meanwhile thy wearied spirit
+Comfort, and feed with kindly hope, assur’d
+I will not leave thee in this lower world.”
+
+This said, departs the sire benevolent,
+And quits me. Hesitating I remain
+At war ’twixt will and will not in my thoughts.
+
+I could not hear what terms he offer’d them,
+But they conferr’d not long, for all at once
+To trial fled within. Clos’d were the gates
+By those our adversaries on the breast
+Of my liege lord: excluded he return’d
+To me with tardy steps. Upon the ground
+His eyes were bent, and from his brow eras’d
+All confidence, while thus with sighs he spake:
+“Who hath denied me these abodes of woe?”
+Then thus to me: “That I am anger’d, think
+No ground of terror: in this trial I
+Shall vanquish, use what arts they may within
+For hindrance. This their insolence, not new,
+Erewhile at gate less secret they display’d,
+Which still is without bolt; upon its arch
+Thou saw’st the deadly scroll: and even now
+On this side of its entrance, down the steep,
+Passing the circles, unescorted, comes
+One whose strong might can open us this land.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO IX
+
+
+The hue, which coward dread on my pale cheeks
+Imprinted, when I saw my guide turn back,
+Chas’d that from his which newly they had worn,
+And inwardly restrain’d it. He, as one
+Who listens, stood attentive: for his eye
+Not far could lead him through the sable air,
+And the thick-gath’ring cloud. “It yet behooves
+We win this fight”—thus he began—“if not—
+Such aid to us is offer’d.—Oh, how long
+Me seems it, ere the promis’d help arrive!”
+
+I noted, how the sequel of his words
+Clok’d their beginning; for the last he spake
+Agreed not with the first. But not the less
+My fear was at his saying; sith I drew
+To import worse perchance, than that he held,
+His mutilated speech. “Doth ever any
+Into this rueful concave’s extreme depth
+Descend, out of the first degree, whose pain
+Is deprivation merely of sweet hope?”
+
+Thus I inquiring. “Rarely,” he replied,
+“It chances, that among us any makes
+This journey, which I wend. Erewhile ’tis true
+Once came I here beneath, conjur’d by fell
+Erictho, sorceress, who compell’d the shades
+Back to their bodies. No long space my flesh
+Was naked of me, when within these walls
+She made me enter, to draw forth a spirit
+From out of Judas’ circle. Lowest place
+Is that of all, obscurest, and remov’d
+Farthest from heav’n’s all-circling orb. The road
+Full well I know: thou therefore rest secure.
+That lake, the noisome stench exhaling, round
+The city’ of grief encompasses, which now
+We may not enter without rage.” Yet more
+He added: but I hold it not in mind,
+For that mine eye toward the lofty tower
+Had drawn me wholly, to its burning top.
+Where in an instant I beheld uprisen
+At once three hellish furies stain’d with blood:
+In limb and motion feminine they seem’d;
+Around them greenest hydras twisting roll’d
+Their volumes; adders and cerastes crept
+Instead of hair, and their fierce temples bound.
+
+He knowing well the miserable hags
+Who tend the queen of endless woe, thus spake:
+
+“Mark thou each dire Erinnys. To the left
+This is Megaera; on the right hand she,
+Who wails, Alecto; and Tisiphone
+I’ th’ midst.” This said, in silence he remain’d
+Their breast they each one clawing tore; themselves
+Smote with their palms, and such shrill clamour rais’d,
+That to the bard I clung, suspicion-bound.
+“Hasten Medusa: so to adamant
+Him shall we change;” all looking down exclaim’d.
+“E’en when by Theseus’ might assail’d, we took
+No ill revenge.” “Turn thyself round, and keep
+Thy count’nance hid; for if the Gorgon dire
+Be shown, and thou shouldst view it, thy return
+Upwards would be for ever lost.” This said,
+Himself my gentle master turn’d me round,
+Nor trusted he my hands, but with his own
+He also hid me. Ye of intellect
+Sound and entire, mark well the lore conceal’d
+Under close texture of the mystic strain!
+
+And now there came o’er the perturbed waves
+Loud-crashing, terrible, a sound that made
+Either shore tremble, as if of a wind
+Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung,
+That ’gainst some forest driving all its might,
+Plucks off the branches, beats them down and hurls
+Afar; then onward passing proudly sweeps
+Its whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.
+
+Mine eyes he loos’d, and spake: “And now direct
+Thy visual nerve along that ancient foam,
+There, thickest where the smoke ascends.” As frogs
+Before their foe the serpent, through the wave
+Ply swiftly all, till at the ground each one
+Lies on a heap; more than a thousand spirits
+Destroy’d, so saw I fleeing before one
+Who pass’d with unwet feet the Stygian sound.
+He, from his face removing the gross air,
+Oft his left hand forth stretch’d, and seem’d alone
+By that annoyance wearied. I perceiv’d
+That he was sent from heav’n, and to my guide
+Turn’d me, who signal made that I should stand
+Quiet, and bend to him. Ah me! how full
+Of noble anger seem’d he! To the gate
+He came, and with his wand touch’d it, whereat
+Open without impediment it flew.
+
+“Outcasts of heav’n! O abject race and scorn’d!”
+Began he on the horrid grunsel standing,
+“Whence doth this wild excess of insolence
+Lodge in you? wherefore kick you ’gainst that will
+Ne’er frustrate of its end, and which so oft
+Hath laid on you enforcement of your pangs?
+What profits at the fays to but the horn?
+Your Cerberus, if ye remember, hence
+Bears still, peel’d of their hair, his throat and maw.”
+
+This said, he turn’d back o’er the filthy way,
+And syllable to us spake none, but wore
+The semblance of a man by other care
+Beset, and keenly press’d, than thought of him
+Who in his presence stands. Then we our steps
+Toward that territory mov’d, secure
+After the hallow’d words. We unoppos’d
+There enter’d; and my mind eager to learn
+What state a fortress like to that might hold,
+I soon as enter’d throw mine eye around,
+And see on every part wide-stretching space
+Replete with bitter pain and torment ill.
+
+As where Rhone stagnates on the plains of Arles,
+Or as at Pola, near Quarnaro’s gulf,
+That closes Italy and laves her bounds,
+The place is all thick spread with sepulchres;
+So was it here, save what in horror here
+Excell’d: for ’midst the graves were scattered flames,
+Wherewith intensely all throughout they burn’d,
+That iron for no craft there hotter needs.
+
+Their lids all hung suspended, and beneath
+From them forth issu’d lamentable moans,
+Such as the sad and tortur’d well might raise.
+
+I thus: “Master! say who are these, interr’d
+Within these vaults, of whom distinct we hear
+The dolorous sighs?” He answer thus return’d:
+
+“The arch-heretics are here, accompanied
+By every sect their followers; and much more,
+Than thou believest, tombs are freighted: like
+With like is buried; and the monuments
+Are different in degrees of heat.” This said,
+He to the right hand turning, on we pass’d
+Betwixt the afflicted and the ramparts high.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO X
+
+
+Now by a secret pathway we proceed,
+Between the walls, that hem the region round,
+And the tormented souls: my master first,
+I close behind his steps. “Virtue supreme!”
+I thus began; “who through these ample orbs
+In circuit lead’st me, even as thou will’st,
+Speak thou, and satisfy my wish. May those,
+Who lie within these sepulchres, be seen?
+Already all the lids are rais’d, and none
+O’er them keeps watch.” He thus in answer spake
+“They shall be closed all, what-time they here
+From Josaphat return’d shall come, and bring
+Their bodies, which above they now have left.
+The cemetery on this part obtain
+With Epicurus all his followers,
+Who with the body make the spirit die.
+Here therefore satisfaction shall be soon
+Both to the question ask’d, and to the wish,
+Which thou conceal’st in silence.” I replied:
+“I keep not, guide belov’d! from thee my heart
+Secreted, but to shun vain length of words,
+A lesson erewhile taught me by thyself.”
+
+“O Tuscan! thou who through the city of fire
+Alive art passing, so discreet of speech!
+Here please thee stay awhile. Thy utterance
+Declares the place of thy nativity
+To be that noble land, with which perchance
+I too severely dealt.” Sudden that sound
+Forth issu’d from a vault, whereat in fear
+I somewhat closer to my leader’s side
+Approaching, he thus spake: “What dost thou? Turn.
+Lo, Farinata, there! who hath himself
+Uplifted: from his girdle upwards all
+Expos’d behold him.” On his face was mine
+Already fix’d; his breast and forehead there
+Erecting, seem’d as in high scorn he held
+E’en hell. Between the sepulchres to him
+My guide thrust me with fearless hands and prompt,
+This warning added: “See thy words be clear!”
+
+He, soon as there I stood at the tomb’s foot,
+Ey’d me a space, then in disdainful mood
+Address’d me: “Say, what ancestors were thine?”
+
+I, willing to obey him, straight reveal’d
+The whole, nor kept back aught: whence he, his brow
+Somewhat uplifting, cried: “Fiercely were they
+Adverse to me, my party, and the blood
+From whence I sprang: twice therefore I abroad
+Scatter’d them.” “Though driv’n out, yet they each time
+From all parts,” answer’d I, “return’d; an art
+Which yours have shown, they are not skill’d to learn.”
+
+Then, peering forth from the unclosed jaw,
+Rose from his side a shade, high as the chin,
+Leaning, methought, upon its knees uprais’d.
+It look’d around, as eager to explore
+If there were other with me; but perceiving
+That fond imagination quench’d, with tears
+Thus spake: “If thou through this blind prison go’st.
+Led by thy lofty genius and profound,
+Where is my son? and wherefore not with thee?”
+
+I straight replied: “Not of myself I come,
+By him, who there expects me, through this clime
+Conducted, whom perchance Guido thy son
+Had in contempt.” Already had his words
+And mode of punishment read me his name,
+Whence I so fully answer’d. He at once
+Exclaim’d, up starting, “How! said’st thou he HAD?
+No longer lives he? Strikes not on his eye
+The blessed daylight?” Then of some delay
+I made ere my reply aware, down fell
+Supine, not after forth appear’d he more.
+
+Meanwhile the other, great of soul, near whom
+I yet was station’d, chang’d not count’nance stern,
+Nor mov’d the neck, nor bent his ribbed side.
+“And if,” continuing the first discourse,
+“They in this art,” he cried, “small skill have shown,
+That doth torment me more e’en than this bed.
+But not yet fifty times shall be relum’d
+Her aspect, who reigns here Queen of this realm,
+Ere thou shalt know the full weight of that art.
+So to the pleasant world mayst thou return,
+As thou shalt tell me, why in all their laws,
+Against my kin this people is so fell?”
+
+“The slaughter and great havoc,” I replied,
+“That colour’d Arbia’s flood with crimson stain—
+To these impute, that in our hallow’d dome
+Such orisons ascend.” Sighing he shook
+The head, then thus resum’d: “In that affray
+I stood not singly, nor without just cause
+Assuredly should with the rest have stirr’d;
+But singly there I stood, when by consent
+Of all, Florence had to the ground been raz’d,
+The one who openly forbad the deed.”
+
+“So may thy lineage find at last repose,”
+I thus adjur’d him, “as thou solve this knot,
+Which now involves my mind. If right I hear,
+Ye seem to view beforehand, that which time
+Leads with him, of the present uninform’d.”
+
+“We view, as one who hath an evil sight,”
+He answer’d, “plainly, objects far remote:
+So much of his large spendour yet imparts
+The’ Almighty Ruler; but when they approach
+Or actually exist, our intellect
+Then wholly fails, nor of your human state
+Except what others bring us know we aught.
+Hence therefore mayst thou understand, that all
+Our knowledge in that instant shall expire,
+When on futurity the portals close.”
+
+Then conscious of my fault, and by remorse
+Smitten, I added thus: “Now shalt thou say
+To him there fallen, that his offspring still
+Is to the living join’d; and bid him know,
+That if from answer silent I abstain’d,
+’Twas that my thought was occupied intent
+Upon that error, which thy help hath solv’d.”
+
+But now my master summoning me back
+I heard, and with more eager haste besought
+The spirit to inform me, who with him
+Partook his lot. He answer thus return’d:
+
+“More than a thousand with me here are laid
+Within is Frederick, second of that name,
+And the Lord Cardinal, and of the rest
+I speak not.” He, this said, from sight withdrew.
+But I my steps towards the ancient bard
+Reverting, ruminated on the words
+Betokening me such ill. Onward he mov’d,
+And thus in going question’d: “Whence the’ amaze
+That holds thy senses wrapt?” I satisfied
+The’ inquiry, and the sage enjoin’d me straight:
+“Let thy safe memory store what thou hast heard
+To thee importing harm; and note thou this,”
+With his rais’d finger bidding me take heed,
+
+“When thou shalt stand before her gracious beam,
+Whose bright eye all surveys, she of thy life
+The future tenour will to thee unfold.”
+
+Forthwith he to the left hand turn’d his feet:
+We left the wall, and tow’rds the middle space
+Went by a path, that to a valley strikes;
+Which e’en thus high exhal’d its noisome steam.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XI
+
+
+Upon the utmost verge of a high bank,
+By craggy rocks environ’d round, we came,
+Where woes beneath more cruel yet were stow’d:
+And here to shun the horrible excess
+Of fetid exhalation, upward cast
+From the profound abyss, behind the lid
+Of a great monument we stood retir’d,
+
+Whereon this scroll I mark’d: “I have in charge
+Pope Anastasius, whom Photinus drew
+From the right path.—Ere our descent behooves
+We make delay, that somewhat first the sense,
+To the dire breath accustom’d, afterward
+Regard it not.” My master thus; to whom
+Answering I spake: “Some compensation find
+That the time past not wholly lost.” He then:
+“Lo! how my thoughts e’en to thy wishes tend!
+My son! within these rocks,” he thus began,
+“Are three close circles in gradation plac’d,
+As these which now thou leav’st. Each one is full
+Of spirits accurs’d; but that the sight alone
+Hereafter may suffice thee, listen how
+And for what cause in durance they abide.
+
+“Of all malicious act abhorr’d in heaven,
+The end is injury; and all such end
+Either by force or fraud works other’s woe
+But fraud, because of man peculiar evil,
+To God is more displeasing; and beneath
+The fraudulent are therefore doom’d to’ endure
+Severer pang. The violent occupy
+All the first circle; and because to force
+Three persons are obnoxious, in three rounds
+Hach within other sep’rate is it fram’d.
+To God, his neighbour, and himself, by man
+Force may be offer’d; to himself I say
+And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear
+At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds
+Upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes
+By devastation, pillage, and the flames,
+His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites
+In malice, plund’rers, and all robbers, hence
+The torment undergo of the first round
+In different herds. Man can do violence
+To himself and his own blessings: and for this
+He in the second round must aye deplore
+With unavailing penitence his crime,
+Whoe’er deprives himself of life and light,
+In reckless lavishment his talent wastes,
+And sorrows there where he should dwell in joy.
+To God may force be offer’d, in the heart
+Denying and blaspheming his high power,
+And nature with her kindly law contemning.
+And thence the inmost round marks with its seal
+Sodom and Cahors, and all such as speak
+Contemptuously’ of the Godhead in their hearts.
+
+“Fraud, that in every conscience leaves a sting,
+May be by man employ’d on one, whose trust
+He wins, or on another who withholds
+Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way
+Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes.
+Whence in the second circle have their nest
+Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries,
+Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce
+To lust, or set their honesty at pawn,
+With such vile scum as these. The other way
+Forgets both Nature’s general love, and that
+Which thereto added afterwards gives birth
+To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle,
+Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis,
+The traitor is eternally consum’d.”
+
+I thus: “Instructor, clearly thy discourse
+Proceeds, distinguishing the hideous chasm
+And its inhabitants with skill exact.
+But tell me this: they of the dull, fat pool,
+Whom the rain beats, or whom the tempest drives,
+Or who with tongues so fierce conflicting meet,
+Wherefore within the city fire-illum’d
+Are not these punish’d, if God’s wrath be on them?
+And if it be not, wherefore in such guise
+Are they condemned?” He answer thus return’d:
+“Wherefore in dotage wanders thus thy mind,
+Not so accustom’d? or what other thoughts
+Possess it? Dwell not in thy memory
+The words, wherein thy ethic page describes
+Three dispositions adverse to Heav’n’s will,
+Incont’nence, malice, and mad brutishness,
+And how incontinence the least offends
+God, and least guilt incurs? If well thou note
+This judgment, and remember who they are,
+Without these walls to vain repentance doom’d,
+Thou shalt discern why they apart are plac’d
+From these fell spirits, and less wreakful pours
+Justice divine on them its vengeance down.”
+
+“O Sun! who healest all imperfect sight,
+Thou so content’st me, when thou solv’st my doubt,
+That ignorance not less than knowledge charms.
+Yet somewhat turn thee back,” I in these words
+Continu’d, “where thou saidst, that usury
+Offends celestial Goodness; and this knot
+Perplex’d unravel.” He thus made reply:
+“Philosophy, to an attentive ear,
+Clearly points out, not in one part alone,
+How imitative nature takes her course
+From the celestial mind and from its art:
+And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds,
+Not many leaves scann’d o’er, observing well
+Thou shalt discover, that your art on her
+Obsequious follows, as the learner treads
+In his instructor’s step, so that your art
+Deserves the name of second in descent
+From God. These two, if thou recall to mind
+Creation’s holy book, from the beginning
+Were the right source of life and excellence
+To human kind. But in another path
+The usurer walks; and Nature in herself
+And in her follower thus he sets at nought,
+Placing elsewhere his hope. But follow now
+My steps on forward journey bent; for now
+The Pisces play with undulating glance
+Along the’ horizon, and the Wain lies all
+O’er the north-west; and onward there a space
+Is our steep passage down the rocky height.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XII
+
+
+The place where to descend the precipice
+We came, was rough as Alp, and on its verge
+Such object lay, as every eye would shun.
+
+As is that ruin, which Adice’s stream
+On this side Trento struck, should’ring the wave,
+Or loos’d by earthquake or for lack of prop;
+For from the mountain’s summit, whence it mov’d
+To the low level, so the headlong rock
+Is shiver’d, that some passage it might give
+To him who from above would pass; e’en such
+Into the chasm was that descent: and there
+At point of the disparted ridge lay stretch’d
+The infamy of Crete, detested brood
+Of the feign’d heifer: and at sight of us
+It gnaw’d itself, as one with rage distract.
+
+To him my guide exclaim’d: “Perchance thou deem’st
+The King of Athens here, who, in the world
+Above, thy death contriv’d. Monster! avaunt!
+He comes not tutor’d by thy sister’s art,
+But to behold your torments is he come.”
+
+Like to a bull, that with impetuous spring
+Darts, at the moment when the fatal blow
+Hath struck him, but unable to proceed
+Plunges on either side; so saw I plunge
+The Minotaur; whereat the sage exclaim’d:
+“Run to the passage! while he storms, ’t is well
+That thou descend.” Thus down our road we took
+Through those dilapidated crags, that oft
+Mov’d underneath my feet, to weight like theirs
+Unus’d. I pond’ring went, and thus he spake:
+
+“Perhaps thy thoughts are of this ruin’d steep,
+Guarded by the brute violence, which I
+Have vanquish’d now. Know then, that when I erst
+Hither descended to the nether hell,
+This rock was not yet fallen. But past doubt
+(If well I mark) not long ere He arrived,
+Who carried off from Dis the mighty spoil
+Of the highest circle, then through all its bounds
+Such trembling seiz’d the deep concave and foul,
+I thought the universe was thrill’d with love,
+Whereby, there are who deem, the world hath oft
+Been into chaos turn’d: and in that point,
+Here, and elsewhere, that old rock toppled down.
+But fix thine eyes beneath: the river of blood
+Approaches, in the which all those are steep’d,
+Who have by violence injur’d.” O blind lust!
+O foolish wrath! who so dost goad us on
+In the brief life, and in the eternal then
+Thus miserably o’erwhelm us. I beheld
+An ample foss, that in a bow was bent,
+As circling all the plain; for so my guide
+Had told. Between it and the rampart’s base
+On trail ran Centaurs, with keen arrows arm’d,
+As to the chase they on the earth were wont.
+
+At seeing us descend they each one stood;
+And issuing from the troop, three sped with bows
+And missile weapons chosen first; of whom
+One cried from far: “Say to what pain ye come
+Condemn’d, who down this steep have journied? Speak
+From whence ye stand, or else the bow I draw.”
+
+To whom my guide: “Our answer shall be made
+To Chiron, there, when nearer him we come.
+Ill was thy mind, thus ever quick and rash.”
+
+Then me he touch’d, and spake: “Nessus is this,
+Who for the fair Deianira died,
+And wrought himself revenge for his own fate.
+He in the midst, that on his breast looks down,
+Is the great Chiron who Achilles nurs’d;
+That other Pholus, prone to wrath.” Around
+The foss these go by thousands, aiming shafts
+At whatsoever spirit dares emerge
+From out the blood, more than his guilt allows.
+
+We to those beasts, that rapid strode along,
+Drew near, when Chiron took an arrow forth,
+And with the notch push’d back his shaggy beard
+To the cheek-bone, then his great mouth to view
+Exposing, to his fellows thus exclaim’d:
+“Are ye aware, that he who comes behind
+Moves what he touches? The feet of the dead
+Are not so wont.” My trusty guide, who now
+Stood near his breast, where the two natures join,
+Thus made reply: “He is indeed alive,
+And solitary so must needs by me
+Be shown the gloomy vale, thereto induc’d
+By strict necessity, not by delight.
+She left her joyful harpings in the sky,
+Who this new office to my care consign’d.
+He is no robber, no dark spirit I.
+But by that virtue, which empowers my step
+To treat so wild a path, grant us, I pray,
+One of thy band, whom we may trust secure,
+Who to the ford may lead us, and convey
+Across, him mounted on his back; for he
+Is not a spirit that may walk the air.”
+
+Then on his right breast turning, Chiron thus
+To Nessus spake: “Return, and be their guide.
+And if ye chance to cross another troop,
+Command them keep aloof.” Onward we mov’d,
+The faithful escort by our side, along
+The border of the crimson-seething flood,
+Whence from those steep’d within loud shrieks arose.
+
+Some there I mark’d, as high as to their brow
+Immers’d, of whom the mighty Centaur thus:
+“These are the souls of tyrants, who were given
+To blood and rapine. Here they wail aloud
+Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells,
+And Dionysius fell, who many a year
+Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow
+Whereon the hair so jetty clust’ring hangs,
+Is Azzolino; that with flaxen locks
+Obizzo’ of Este, in the world destroy’d
+By his foul step-son.” To the bard rever’d
+I turned me round, and thus he spake; “Let him
+Be to thee now first leader, me but next
+To him in rank.” Then farther on a space
+The Centaur paus’d, near some, who at the throat
+Were extant from the wave; and showing us
+A spirit by itself apart retir’d,
+Exclaim’d: “He in God’s bosom smote the heart,
+Which yet is honour’d on the bank of Thames.”
+
+A race I next espied, who held the head,
+And even all the bust above the stream.
+’Midst these I many a face remember’d well.
+Thus shallow more and more the blood became,
+So that at last it but imbru’d the feet;
+And there our passage lay athwart the foss.
+
+“As ever on this side the boiling wave
+Thou seest diminishing,” the Centaur said,
+“So on the other, be thou well assur’d,
+It lower still and lower sinks its bed,
+Till in that part it reuniting join,
+Where ’t is the lot of tyranny to mourn.
+There Heav’n’s stern justice lays chastising hand
+On Attila, who was the scourge of earth,
+On Sextus, and on Pyrrhus, and extracts
+Tears ever by the seething flood unlock’d
+From the Rinieri, of Corneto this,
+Pazzo the other nam’d, who fill’d the ways
+With violence and war.” This said, he turn’d,
+And quitting us, alone repass’d the ford.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XIII
+
+
+Ere Nessus yet had reach’d the other bank,
+We enter’d on a forest, where no track
+Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there
+The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light
+The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform’d
+And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns
+Instead, with venom fill’d. Less sharp than these,
+Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide
+Those animals, that hate the cultur’d fields,
+Betwixt Corneto and Cecina’s stream.
+
+Here the brute Harpies make their nest, the same
+Who from the Strophades the Trojan band
+Drove with dire boding of their future woe.
+Broad are their pennons, of the human form
+Their neck and count’nance, arm’d with talons keen
+The feet, and the huge belly fledge with wings
+These sit and wail on the drear mystic wood.
+
+The kind instructor in these words began:
+“Ere farther thou proceed, know thou art now
+I’ th’ second round, and shalt be, till thou come
+Upon the horrid sand: look therefore well
+Around thee, and such things thou shalt behold,
+As would my speech discredit.” On all sides
+I heard sad plainings breathe, and none could see
+From whom they might have issu’d. In amaze
+Fast bound I stood. He, as it seem’d, believ’d,
+That I had thought so many voices came
+From some amid those thickets close conceal’d,
+And thus his speech resum’d: “If thou lop off
+A single twig from one of those ill plants,
+The thought thou hast conceiv’d shall vanish quite.”
+
+Thereat a little stretching forth my hand,
+From a great wilding gather’d I a branch,
+And straight the trunk exclaim’d: “Why pluck’st thou me?”
+
+Then as the dark blood trickled down its side,
+These words it added: “Wherefore tear’st me thus?
+Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast?
+Men once were we, that now are rooted here.
+Thy hand might well have spar’d us, had we been
+The souls of serpents.” As a brand yet green,
+That burning at one end from the’ other sends
+A groaning sound, and hisses with the wind
+That forces out its way, so burst at once,
+Forth from the broken splinter words and blood.
+
+I, letting fall the bough, remain’d as one
+Assail’d by terror, and the sage replied:
+“If he, O injur’d spirit! could have believ’d
+What he hath seen but in my verse describ’d,
+He never against thee had stretch’d his hand.
+But I, because the thing surpass’d belief,
+Prompted him to this deed, which even now
+Myself I rue. But tell me, who thou wast;
+That, for this wrong to do thee some amends,
+In the upper world (for thither to return
+Is granted him) thy fame he may revive.”
+
+“That pleasant word of thine,” the trunk replied
+“Hath so inveigled me, that I from speech
+Cannot refrain, wherein if I indulge
+A little longer, in the snare detain’d,
+Count it not grievous. I it was, who held
+Both keys to Frederick’s heart, and turn’d the wards,
+Opening and shutting, with a skill so sweet,
+That besides me, into his inmost breast
+Scarce any other could admittance find.
+The faith I bore to my high charge was such,
+It cost me the life-blood that warm’d my veins.
+The harlot, who ne’er turn’d her gloating eyes
+From Caesar’s household, common vice and pest
+Of courts, ’gainst me inflam’d the minds of all;
+And to Augustus they so spread the flame,
+That my glad honours chang’d to bitter woes.
+My soul, disdainful and disgusted, sought
+Refuge in death from scorn, and I became,
+Just as I was, unjust toward myself.
+By the new roots, which fix this stem, I swear,
+That never faith I broke to my liege lord,
+Who merited such honour; and of you,
+If any to the world indeed return,
+Clear he from wrong my memory, that lies
+Yet prostrate under envy’s cruel blow.”
+
+First somewhat pausing, till the mournful words
+Were ended, then to me the bard began:
+“Lose not the time; but speak and of him ask,
+If more thou wish to learn.” Whence I replied:
+“Question thou him again of whatsoe’er
+Will, as thou think’st, content me; for no power
+Have I to ask, such pity’ is at my heart.”
+
+He thus resum’d; “So may he do for thee
+Freely what thou entreatest, as thou yet
+Be pleas’d, imprison’d Spirit! to declare,
+How in these gnarled joints the soul is tied;
+And whether any ever from such frame
+Be loosen’d, if thou canst, that also tell.”
+
+Thereat the trunk breath’d hard, and the wind soon
+Chang’d into sounds articulate like these;
+
+“Briefly ye shall be answer’d. When departs
+The fierce soul from the body, by itself
+Thence torn asunder, to the seventh gulf
+By Minos doom’d, into the wood it falls,
+No place assign’d, but wheresoever chance
+Hurls it, there sprouting, as a grain of spelt,
+It rises to a sapling, growing thence
+A savage plant. The Harpies, on its leaves
+Then feeding, cause both pain and for the pain
+A vent to grief. We, as the rest, shall come
+For our own spoils, yet not so that with them
+We may again be clad; for what a man
+Takes from himself it is not just he have.
+Here we perforce shall drag them; and throughout
+The dismal glade our bodies shall be hung,
+Each on the wild thorn of his wretched shade.”
+
+Attentive yet to listen to the trunk
+We stood, expecting farther speech, when us
+A noise surpris’d, as when a man perceives
+The wild boar and the hunt approach his place
+Of station’d watch, who of the beasts and boughs
+Loud rustling round him hears. And lo! there came
+Two naked, torn with briers, in headlong flight,
+That they before them broke each fan o’ th’ wood.
+“Haste now,” the foremost cried, “now haste thee death!”
+
+The’ other, as seem’d, impatient of delay
+Exclaiming, “Lano! not so bent for speed
+Thy sinews, in the lists of Toppo’s field.”
+And then, for that perchance no longer breath
+Suffic’d him, of himself and of a bush
+One group he made. Behind them was the wood
+Full of black female mastiffs, gaunt and fleet,
+As greyhounds that have newly slipp’d the leash.
+On him, who squatted down, they stuck their fangs,
+And having rent him piecemeal bore away
+The tortur’d limbs. My guide then seiz’d my hand,
+And led me to the thicket, which in vain
+Mourn’d through its bleeding wounds: “O Giacomo
+Of Sant’ Andrea! what avails it thee,”
+It cried, “that of me thou hast made thy screen?
+For thy ill life what blame on me recoils?”
+
+When o’er it he had paus’d, my master spake:
+“Say who wast thou, that at so many points
+Breath’st out with blood thy lamentable speech?”
+
+He answer’d: “Oh, ye spirits: arriv’d in time
+To spy the shameful havoc, that from me
+My leaves hath sever’d thus, gather them up,
+And at the foot of their sad parent-tree
+Carefully lay them. In that city’ I dwelt,
+Who for the Baptist her first patron chang’d,
+Whence he for this shall cease not with his art
+To work her woe: and if there still remain’d not
+On Arno’s passage some faint glimpse of him,
+Those citizens, who rear’d once more her walls
+Upon the ashes left by Attila,
+Had labour’d without profit of their toil.
+I slung the fatal noose from my own roof.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XIV
+
+
+Soon as the charity of native land
+Wrought in my bosom, I the scatter’d leaves
+Collected, and to him restor’d, who now
+Was hoarse with utt’rance. To the limit thence
+We came, which from the third the second round
+Divides, and where of justice is display’d
+Contrivance horrible. Things then first seen
+Clearlier to manifest, I tell how next
+A plain we reach’d, that from its sterile bed
+Each plant repell’d. The mournful wood waves round
+Its garland on all sides, as round the wood
+Spreads the sad foss. There, on the very edge,
+Our steps we stay’d. It was an area wide
+Of arid sand and thick, resembling most
+The soil that erst by Cato’s foot was trod.
+
+Vengeance of Heav’n! Oh! how shouldst thou be fear’d
+By all, who read what here my eyes beheld!
+
+Of naked spirits many a flock I saw,
+All weeping piteously, to different laws
+Subjected: for on the’ earth some lay supine,
+Some crouching close were seated, others pac’d
+Incessantly around; the latter tribe,
+More numerous, those fewer who beneath
+The torment lay, but louder in their grief.
+
+O’er all the sand fell slowly wafting down
+Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow
+On Alpine summit, when the wind is hush’d.
+As in the torrid Indian clime, the son
+Of Ammon saw upon his warrior band
+Descending, solid flames, that to the ground
+Came down: whence he bethought him with his troop
+To trample on the soil; for easier thus
+The vapour was extinguish’d, while alone;
+So fell the eternal fiery flood, wherewith
+The marble glow’d underneath, as under stove
+The viands, doubly to augment the pain.
+
+Unceasing was the play of wretched hands,
+Now this, now that way glancing, to shake off
+The heat, still falling fresh. I thus began:
+“Instructor! thou who all things overcom’st,
+Except the hardy demons, that rush’d forth
+To stop our entrance at the gate, say who
+Is yon huge spirit, that, as seems, heeds not
+The burning, but lies writhen in proud scorn,
+As by the sultry tempest immatur’d?”
+
+Straight he himself, who was aware I ask’d
+My guide of him, exclaim’d: “Such as I was
+When living, dead such now I am. If Jove
+Weary his workman out, from whom in ire
+He snatch’d the lightnings, that at my last day
+Transfix’d me, if the rest be weary out
+At their black smithy labouring by turns
+In Mongibello, while he cries aloud;
+“Help, help, good Mulciber!” as erst he cried
+In the Phlegraean warfare, and the bolts
+Launch he full aim’d at me with all his might,
+He never should enjoy a sweet revenge.”
+
+Then thus my guide, in accent higher rais’d
+Than I before had heard him: “Capaneus!
+Thou art more punish’d, in that this thy pride
+Lives yet unquench’d: no torrent, save thy rage,
+Were to thy fury pain proportion’d full.”
+
+Next turning round to me with milder lip
+He spake: “This of the seven kings was one,
+Who girt the Theban walls with siege, and held,
+As still he seems to hold, God in disdain,
+And sets his high omnipotence at nought.
+But, as I told him, his despiteful mood
+Is ornament well suits the breast that wears it.
+Follow me now; and look thou set not yet
+Thy foot in the hot sand, but to the wood
+Keep ever close.” Silently on we pass’d
+To where there gushes from the forest’s bound
+A little brook, whose crimson’d wave yet lifts
+My hair with horror. As the rill, that runs
+From Bulicame, to be portion’d out
+Among the sinful women; so ran this
+Down through the sand, its bottom and each bank
+Stone-built, and either margin at its side,
+Whereon I straight perceiv’d our passage lay.
+
+“Of all that I have shown thee, since that gate
+We enter’d first, whose threshold is to none
+Denied, nought else so worthy of regard,
+As is this river, has thine eye discern’d,
+O’er which the flaming volley all is quench’d.”
+
+So spake my guide; and I him thence besought,
+That having giv’n me appetite to know,
+The food he too would give, that hunger crav’d.
+
+“In midst of ocean,” forthwith he began,
+“A desolate country lies, which Crete is nam’d,
+Under whose monarch in old times the world
+Liv’d pure and chaste. A mountain rises there,
+Call’d Ida, joyous once with leaves and streams,
+Deserted now like a forbidden thing.
+It was the spot which Rhea, Saturn’s spouse,
+Chose for the secret cradle of her son;
+And better to conceal him, drown’d in shouts
+His infant cries. Within the mount, upright
+An ancient form there stands and huge, that turns
+His shoulders towards Damiata, and at Rome
+As in his mirror looks. Of finest gold
+His head is shap’d, pure silver are the breast
+And arms; thence to the middle is of brass.
+And downward all beneath well-temper’d steel,
+Save the right foot of potter’s clay, on which
+Than on the other more erect he stands,
+Each part except the gold, is rent throughout;
+And from the fissure tears distil, which join’d
+Penetrate to that cave. They in their course
+Thus far precipitated down the rock
+Form Acheron, and Styx, and Phlegethon;
+Then by this straiten’d channel passing hence
+Beneath, e’en to the lowest depth of all,
+Form there Cocytus, of whose lake (thyself
+Shall see it) I here give thee no account.”
+
+Then I to him: “If from our world this sluice
+Be thus deriv’d; wherefore to us but now
+Appears it at this edge?” He straight replied:
+“The place, thou know’st, is round; and though great part
+Thou have already pass’d, still to the left
+Descending to the nethermost, not yet
+Hast thou the circuit made of the whole orb.
+Wherefore if aught of new to us appear,
+It needs not bring up wonder in thy looks.”
+
+Then I again inquir’d: “Where flow the streams
+Of Phlegethon and Lethe? for of one
+Thou tell’st not, and the other of that shower,
+Thou say’st, is form’d.” He answer thus return’d:
+“Doubtless thy questions all well pleas’d I hear.
+Yet the red seething wave might have resolv’d
+One thou proposest. Lethe thou shalt see,
+But not within this hollow, in the place,
+Whither to lave themselves the spirits go,
+Whose blame hath been by penitence remov’d.”
+He added: “Time is now we quit the wood.
+Look thou my steps pursue: the margins give
+Safe passage, unimpeded by the flames;
+For over them all vapour is extinct.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XV
+
+
+One of the solid margins bears us now
+Envelop’d in the mist, that from the stream
+Arising, hovers o’er, and saves from fire
+Both piers and water. As the Flemings rear
+Their mound, ’twixt Ghent and Bruges, to chase back
+The ocean, fearing his tumultuous tide
+That drives toward them, or the Paduans theirs
+Along the Brenta, to defend their towns
+And castles, ere the genial warmth be felt
+On Chiarentana’s top; such were the mounds,
+So fram’d, though not in height or bulk to these
+Made equal, by the master, whosoe’er
+He was, that rais’d them here. We from the wood
+Were not so far remov’d, that turning round
+I might not have discern’d it, when we met
+A troop of spirits, who came beside the pier.
+
+They each one ey’d us, as at eventide
+One eyes another under a new moon,
+And toward us sharpen’d their sight as keen,
+As an old tailor at his needle’s eye.
+
+Thus narrowly explor’d by all the tribe,
+I was agniz’d of one, who by the skirt
+Caught me, and cried, “What wonder have we here!”
+
+And I, when he to me outstretch’d his arm,
+Intently fix’d my ken on his parch’d looks,
+That although smirch’d with fire, they hinder’d not
+But I remember’d him; and towards his face
+My hand inclining, answer’d: “Sir! Brunetto!
+
+“And art thou here?” He thus to me: “My son!
+Oh let it not displease thee, if Brunetto
+Latini but a little space with thee
+Turn back, and leave his fellows to proceed.”
+
+I thus to him replied: “Much as I can,
+I thereto pray thee; and if thou be willing,
+That I here seat me with thee, I consent;
+His leave, with whom I journey, first obtain’d.”
+
+“O son!” said he, “whoever of this throng
+One instant stops, lies then a hundred years,
+No fan to ventilate him, when the fire
+Smites sorest. Pass thou therefore on. I close
+Will at thy garments walk, and then rejoin
+My troop, who go mourning their endless doom.”
+
+I dar’d not from the path descend to tread
+On equal ground with him, but held my head
+Bent down, as one who walks in reverent guise.
+
+“What chance or destiny,” thus he began,
+“Ere the last day conducts thee here below?
+And who is this, that shows to thee the way?”
+
+“There up aloft,” I answer’d, “in the life
+Serene, I wander’d in a valley lost,
+Before mine age had to its fullness reach’d.
+But yester-morn I left it: then once more
+Into that vale returning, him I met;
+And by this path homeward he leads me back.”
+
+“If thou,” he answer’d, “follow but thy star,
+Thou canst not miss at last a glorious haven:
+Unless in fairer days my judgment err’d.
+And if my fate so early had not chanc’d,
+Seeing the heav’ns thus bounteous to thee, I
+Had gladly giv’n thee comfort in thy work.
+But that ungrateful and malignant race,
+Who in old times came down from Fesole,
+Ay and still smack of their rough mountain-flint,
+Will for thy good deeds shew thee enmity.
+Nor wonder; for amongst ill-savour’d crabs
+It suits not the sweet fig-tree lay her fruit.
+Old fame reports them in the world for blind,
+Covetous, envious, proud. Look to it well:
+Take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways. For thee
+Thy fortune hath such honour in reserve,
+That thou by either party shalt be crav’d
+With hunger keen: but be the fresh herb far
+From the goat’s tooth. The herd of Fesole
+May of themselves make litter, not touch the plant,
+If any such yet spring on their rank bed,
+In which the holy seed revives, transmitted
+From those true Romans, who still there remain’d,
+When it was made the nest of so much ill.”
+
+“Were all my wish fulfill’d,” I straight replied,
+“Thou from the confines of man’s nature yet
+Hadst not been driven forth; for in my mind
+Is fix’d, and now strikes full upon my heart
+The dear, benign, paternal image, such
+As thine was, when so lately thou didst teach me
+The way for man to win eternity;
+And how I priz’d the lesson, it behooves,
+That, long as life endures, my tongue should speak,
+What of my fate thou tell’st, that write I down:
+And with another text to comment on
+For her I keep it, the celestial dame,
+Who will know all, if I to her arrive.
+This only would I have thee clearly note:
+That so my conscience have no plea against me;
+Do fortune as she list, I stand prepar’d.
+Not new or strange such earnest to mine ear.
+Speed fortune then her wheel, as likes her best,
+The clown his mattock; all things have their course.”
+
+Thereat my sapient guide upon his right
+Turn’d himself back, then look’d at me and spake:
+“He listens to good purpose who takes note.”
+
+I not the less still on my way proceed,
+Discoursing with Brunetto, and inquire
+Who are most known and chief among his tribe.
+
+“To know of some is well;” thus he replied,
+“But of the rest silence may best beseem.
+Time would not serve us for report so long.
+In brief I tell thee, that all these were clerks,
+Men of great learning and no less renown,
+By one same sin polluted in the world.
+With them is Priscian, and Accorso’s son
+Francesco herds among that wretched throng:
+And, if the wish of so impure a blotch
+Possess’d thee, him thou also might’st have seen,
+Who by the servants’ servant was transferr’d
+From Arno’s seat to Bacchiglione, where
+His ill-strain’d nerves he left. I more would add,
+But must from farther speech and onward way
+Alike desist, for yonder I behold
+A mist new-risen on the sandy plain.
+A company, with whom I may not sort,
+Approaches. I commend my TREASURE to thee,
+Wherein I yet survive; my sole request.”
+
+This said he turn’d, and seem’d as one of those,
+Who o’er Verona’s champain try their speed
+For the green mantle, and of them he seem’d,
+Not he who loses but who gains the prize.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XVI
+
+
+Now came I where the water’s din was heard,
+As down it fell into the other round,
+Resounding like the hum of swarming bees:
+When forth together issu’d from a troop,
+That pass’d beneath the fierce tormenting storm,
+Three spirits, running swift. They towards us came,
+And each one cried aloud, “Oh do thou stay!
+Whom by the fashion of thy garb we deem
+To be some inmate of our evil land.”
+
+Ah me! what wounds I mark’d upon their limbs,
+Recent and old, inflicted by the flames!
+E’en the remembrance of them grieves me yet.
+
+Attentive to their cry my teacher paus’d,
+And turn’d to me his visage, and then spake;
+“Wait now! our courtesy these merit well:
+And were ’t not for the nature of the place,
+Whence glide the fiery darts, I should have said,
+That haste had better suited thee than them.”
+
+They, when we stopp’d, resum’d their ancient wail,
+And soon as they had reach’d us, all the three
+Whirl’d round together in one restless wheel.
+As naked champions, smear’d with slippery oil,
+Are wont intent to watch their place of hold
+And vantage, ere in closer strife they meet;
+Thus each one, as he wheel’d, his countenance
+At me directed, so that opposite
+The neck mov’d ever to the twinkling feet.
+
+“If misery of this drear wilderness,”
+Thus one began, “added to our sad cheer
+And destitute, do call forth scorn on us
+And our entreaties, let our great renown
+Incline thee to inform us who thou art,
+That dost imprint with living feet unharm’d
+The soil of Hell. He, in whose track thou see’st
+My steps pursuing, naked though he be
+And reft of all, was of more high estate
+Than thou believest; grandchild of the chaste
+Gualdrada, him they Guidoguerra call’d,
+Who in his lifetime many a noble act
+Achiev’d, both by his wisdom and his sword.
+The other, next to me that beats the sand,
+Is Aldobrandi, name deserving well,
+In the’ upper world, of honour; and myself
+Who in this torment do partake with them,
+Am Rusticucci, whom, past doubt, my wife
+Of savage temper, more than aught beside
+Hath to this evil brought.” If from the fire
+I had been shelter’d, down amidst them straight
+I then had cast me, nor my guide, I deem,
+Would have restrain’d my going; but that fear
+Of the dire burning vanquish’d the desire,
+Which made me eager of their wish’d embrace.
+
+I then began: “Not scorn, but grief much more,
+Such as long time alone can cure, your doom
+Fix’d deep within me, soon as this my lord
+Spake words, whose tenour taught me to expect
+That such a race, as ye are, was at hand.
+I am a countryman of yours, who still
+Affectionate have utter’d, and have heard
+Your deeds and names renown’d. Leaving the gall
+For the sweet fruit I go, that a sure guide
+Hath promis’d to me. But behooves, that far
+As to the centre first I downward tend.”
+
+“So may long space thy spirit guide thy limbs,”
+He answer straight return’d; “and so thy fame
+Shine bright, when thou art gone; as thou shalt tell,
+If courtesy and valour, as they wont,
+Dwell in our city, or have vanish’d clean?
+For one amidst us late condemn’d to wail,
+Borsiere, yonder walking with his peers,
+Grieves us no little by the news he brings.”
+
+“An upstart multitude and sudden gains,
+Pride and excess, O Florence! have in thee
+Engender’d, so that now in tears thou mourn’st!”
+Thus cried I with my face uprais’d, and they
+All three, who for an answer took my words,
+Look’d at each other, as men look when truth
+Comes to their ear. “If thou at other times,”
+They all at once rejoin’d, “so easily
+Satisfy those, who question, happy thou,
+Gifted with words, so apt to speak thy thought!
+Wherefore if thou escape this darksome clime,
+Returning to behold the radiant stars,
+When thou with pleasure shalt retrace the past,
+See that of us thou speak among mankind.”
+
+This said, they broke the circle, and so swift
+Fled, that as pinions seem’d their nimble feet.
+
+Not in so short a time might one have said
+“Amen,” as they had vanish’d. Straight my guide
+Pursu’d his track. I follow’d; and small space
+Had we pass’d onward, when the water’s sound
+Was now so near at hand, that we had scarce
+Heard one another’s speech for the loud din.
+
+E’en as the river, that holds on its course
+Unmingled, from the mount of Vesulo,
+On the left side of Apennine, toward
+The east, which Acquacheta higher up
+They call, ere it descend into the vale,
+At Forli by that name no longer known,
+Rebellows o’er Saint Benedict, roll’d on
+From the’ Alpine summit down a precipice,
+Where space enough to lodge a thousand spreads;
+Thus downward from a craggy steep we found,
+That this dark wave resounded, roaring loud,
+So that the ear its clamour soon had stunn’d.
+
+I had a cord that brac’d my girdle round,
+Wherewith I erst had thought fast bound to take
+The painted leopard. This when I had all
+Unloosen’d from me (so my master bade)
+I gather’d up, and stretch’d it forth to him.
+Then to the right he turn’d, and from the brink
+Standing few paces distant, cast it down
+Into the deep abyss. “And somewhat strange,”
+Thus to myself I spake, “signal so strange
+Betokens, which my guide with earnest eye
+Thus follows.” Ah! what caution must men use
+With those who look not at the deed alone,
+But spy into the thoughts with subtle skill!
+
+“Quickly shall come,” he said, “what I expect,
+Thine eye discover quickly, that whereof
+Thy thought is dreaming.” Ever to that truth,
+Which but the semblance of a falsehood wears,
+A man, if possible, should bar his lip;
+Since, although blameless, he incurs reproach.
+But silence here were vain; and by these notes
+Which now I sing, reader! I swear to thee,
+So may they favour find to latest times!
+That through the gross and murky air I spied
+A shape come swimming up, that might have quell’d
+The stoutest heart with wonder, in such guise
+As one returns, who hath been down to loose
+An anchor grappled fast against some rock,
+Or to aught else that in the salt wave lies,
+Who upward springing close draws in his feet.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XVII
+
+
+“Lo! the fell monster with the deadly sting!
+Who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls
+And firm embattled spears, and with his filth
+Taints all the world!” Thus me my guide address’d,
+And beckon’d him, that he should come to shore,
+Near to the stony causeway’s utmost edge.
+
+Forthwith that image vile of fraud appear’d,
+His head and upper part expos’d on land,
+But laid not on the shore his bestial train.
+His face the semblance of a just man’s wore,
+So kind and gracious was its outward cheer;
+The rest was serpent all: two shaggy claws
+Reach’d to the armpits, and the back and breast,
+And either side, were painted o’er with nodes
+And orbits. Colours variegated more
+Nor Turks nor Tartars e’er on cloth of state
+With interchangeable embroidery wove,
+Nor spread Arachne o’er her curious loom.
+As ofttimes a light skiff, moor’d to the shore,
+Stands part in water, part upon the land;
+Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor,
+The beaver settles watching for his prey;
+So on the rim, that fenc’d the sand with rock,
+Sat perch’d the fiend of evil. In the void
+Glancing, his tail upturn’d its venomous fork,
+With sting like scorpion’s arm’d. Then thus my guide:
+“Now need our way must turn few steps apart,
+Far as to that ill beast, who couches there.”
+
+Thereat toward the right our downward course
+We shap’d, and, better to escape the flame
+And burning marle, ten paces on the verge
+Proceeded. Soon as we to him arrive,
+A little further on mine eye beholds
+A tribe of spirits, seated on the sand
+Near the wide chasm. Forthwith my master spake:
+“That to the full thy knowledge may extend
+Of all this round contains, go now, and mark
+The mien these wear: but hold not long discourse.
+Till thou returnest, I with him meantime
+Will parley, that to us he may vouchsafe
+The aid of his strong shoulders.” Thus alone
+Yet forward on the’ extremity I pac’d
+Of that seventh circle, where the mournful tribe
+Were seated. At the eyes forth gush’d their pangs.
+Against the vapours and the torrid soil
+Alternately their shifting hands they plied.
+Thus use the dogs in summer still to ply
+Their jaws and feet by turns, when bitten sore
+By gnats, or flies, or gadflies swarming round.
+
+Noting the visages of some, who lay
+Beneath the pelting of that dolorous fire,
+One of them all I knew not; but perceiv’d,
+That pendent from his neck each bore a pouch
+With colours and with emblems various mark’d,
+On which it seem’d as if their eye did feed.
+
+And when amongst them looking round I came,
+A yellow purse I saw with azure wrought,
+That wore a lion’s countenance and port.
+Then still my sight pursuing its career,
+Another I beheld, than blood more red.
+A goose display of whiter wing than curd.
+And one, who bore a fat and azure swine
+Pictur’d on his white scrip, addressed me thus:
+“What dost thou in this deep? Go now and know,
+Since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here
+Vitaliano on my left shall sit.
+A Paduan with these Florentines am I.
+Ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming
+‘O haste that noble knight! he who the pouch
+With the three beaks will bring!’” This said, he writh’d
+The mouth, and loll’d the tongue out, like an ox
+That licks his nostrils. I, lest longer stay
+He ill might brook, who bade me stay not long,
+Backward my steps from those sad spirits turn’d.
+
+My guide already seated on the haunch
+Of the fierce animal I found; and thus
+He me encourag’d. “Be thou stout; be bold.
+Down such a steep flight must we now descend!
+Mount thou before: for that no power the tail
+May have to harm thee, I will be i’ th’ midst.”
+
+As one, who hath an ague fit so near,
+His nails already are turn’d blue, and he
+Quivers all o’er, if he but eye the shade;
+Such was my cheer at hearing of his words.
+But shame soon interpos’d her threat, who makes
+The servant bold in presence of his lord.
+
+I settled me upon those shoulders huge,
+And would have said, but that the words to aid
+My purpose came not, “Look thou clasp me firm!”
+
+But he whose succour then not first I prov’d,
+Soon as I mounted, in his arms aloft,
+Embracing, held me up, and thus he spake:
+“Geryon! now move thee! be thy wheeling gyres
+Of ample circuit, easy thy descent.
+Think on th’ unusual burden thou sustain’st.”
+
+As a small vessel, back’ning out from land,
+Her station quits; so thence the monster loos’d,
+And when he felt himself at large, turn’d round
+There where the breast had been, his forked tail.
+Thus, like an eel, outstretch’d at length he steer’d,
+Gath’ring the air up with retractile claws.
+
+Not greater was the dread when Phaeton
+The reins let drop at random, whence high heaven,
+Whereof signs yet appear, was wrapt in flames;
+Nor when ill-fated Icarus perceiv’d,
+By liquefaction of the scalded wax,
+The trusted pennons loosen’d from his loins,
+His sire exclaiming loud, “Ill way thou keep’st!”
+Than was my dread, when round me on each part
+The air I view’d, and other object none
+Save the fell beast. He slowly sailing, wheels
+His downward motion, unobserv’d of me,
+But that the wind, arising to my face,
+Breathes on me from below. Now on our right
+I heard the cataract beneath us leap
+With hideous crash; whence bending down to’ explore,
+New terror I conceiv’d at the steep plunge:
+
+For flames I saw, and wailings smote mine ear:
+So that all trembling close I crouch’d my limbs,
+And then distinguish’d, unperceiv’d before,
+By the dread torments that on every side
+Drew nearer, how our downward course we wound.
+
+As falcon, that hath long been on the wing,
+But lure nor bird hath seen, while in despair
+The falconer cries, “Ah me! thou stoop’st to earth!”
+Wearied descends, and swiftly down the sky
+In many an orbit wheels, then lighting sits
+At distance from his lord in angry mood;
+So Geryon lighting places us on foot
+Low down at base of the deep-furrow’d rock,
+And, of his burden there discharg’d, forthwith
+Sprang forward, like an arrow from the string.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XVIII
+
+
+There is a place within the depths of hell
+Call’d Malebolge, all of rock dark-stain’d
+With hue ferruginous, e’en as the steep
+That round it circling winds. Right in the midst
+Of that abominable region, yawns
+A spacious gulf profound, whereof the frame
+Due time shall tell. The circle, that remains,
+Throughout its round, between the gulf and base
+Of the high craggy banks, successive forms
+Ten trenches, in its hollow bottom sunk.
+
+As where to guard the walls, full many a foss
+Begirds some stately castle, sure defence
+Affording to the space within, so here
+Were model’d these; and as like fortresses
+E’en from their threshold to the brink without,
+Are flank’d with bridges; from the rock’s low base
+Thus flinty paths advanc’d, that ’cross the moles
+And dikes, struck onward far as to the gulf,
+That in one bound collected cuts them off.
+Such was the place, wherein we found ourselves
+From Geryon’s back dislodg’d. The bard to left
+Held on his way, and I behind him mov’d.
+
+On our right hand new misery I saw,
+New pains, new executioners of wrath,
+That swarming peopled the first chasm. Below
+Were naked sinners. Hitherward they came,
+Meeting our faces from the middle point,
+With us beyond but with a larger stride.
+E’en thus the Romans, when the year returns
+Of Jubilee, with better speed to rid
+The thronging multitudes, their means devise
+For such as pass the bridge; that on one side
+All front toward the castle, and approach
+Saint Peter’s fane, on th’ other towards the mount.
+
+Each divers way along the grisly rock,
+Horn’d demons I beheld, with lashes huge,
+That on their back unmercifully smote.
+Ah! how they made them bound at the first stripe!
+
+None for the second waited nor the third.
+
+Meantime as on I pass’d, one met my sight
+Whom soon as view’d; “Of him,” cried I, “not yet
+Mine eye hath had his fill.” With fixed gaze
+I therefore scann’d him. Straight the teacher kind
+Paus’d with me, and consented I should walk
+Backward a space, and the tormented spirit,
+Who thought to hide him, bent his visage down.
+But it avail’d him nought; for I exclaim’d:
+“Thou who dost cast thy eye upon the ground,
+Unless thy features do belie thee much,
+Venedico art thou. But what brings thee
+Into this bitter seas’ning?” He replied:
+“Unwillingly I answer to thy words.
+But thy clear speech, that to my mind recalls
+The world I once inhabited, constrains me.
+Know then ’twas I who led fair Ghisola
+To do the Marquis’ will, however fame
+The shameful tale have bruited. Nor alone
+Bologna hither sendeth me to mourn
+Rather with us the place is so o’erthrong’d
+That not so many tongues this day are taught,
+Betwixt the Reno and Savena’s stream,
+To answer SIPA in their country’s phrase.
+And if of that securer proof thou need,
+Remember but our craving thirst for gold.”
+
+Him speaking thus, a demon with his thong
+Struck, and exclaim’d, “Away! corrupter! here
+Women are none for sale.” Forthwith I join’d
+My escort, and few paces thence we came
+To where a rock forth issued from the bank.
+That easily ascended, to the right
+Upon its splinter turning, we depart
+From those eternal barriers. When arriv’d,
+Where underneath the gaping arch lets pass
+The scourged souls: “Pause here,” the teacher said,
+“And let these others miserable, now
+Strike on thy ken, faces not yet beheld,
+For that together they with us have walk’d.”
+
+From the old bridge we ey’d the pack, who came
+From th’ other side towards us, like the rest,
+Excoriate from the lash. My gentle guide,
+By me unquestion’d, thus his speech resum’d:
+“Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends,
+And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear.
+How yet the regal aspect he retains!
+Jason is he, whose skill and prowess won
+The ram from Colchos. To the Lemnian isle
+His passage thither led him, when those bold
+And pitiless women had slain all their males.
+There he with tokens and fair witching words
+Hypsipyle beguil’d, a virgin young,
+Who first had all the rest herself beguil’d.
+Impregnated he left her there forlorn.
+Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain.
+Here too Medea’s inj’ries are avenged.
+All bear him company, who like deceit
+To his have practis’d. And thus much to know
+Of the first vale suffice thee, and of those
+Whom its keen torments urge.” Now had we come
+Where, crossing the next pier, the straighten’d path
+Bestrides its shoulders to another arch.
+
+Hence in the second chasm we heard the ghosts,
+Who jibber in low melancholy sounds,
+With wide-stretch’d nostrils snort, and on themselves
+Smite with their palms. Upon the banks a scurf
+From the foul steam condens’d, encrusting hung,
+That held sharp combat with the sight and smell.
+
+So hollow is the depth, that from no part,
+Save on the summit of the rocky span,
+Could I distinguish aught. Thus far we came;
+And thence I saw, within the foss below,
+A crowd immers’d in ordure, that appear’d
+Draff of the human body. There beneath
+Searching with eye inquisitive, I mark’d
+One with his head so grim’d, ’t were hard to deem,
+If he were clerk or layman. Loud he cried:
+“Why greedily thus bendest more on me,
+Than on these other filthy ones, thy ken?”
+
+“Because if true my mem’ry,” I replied,
+“I heretofore have seen thee with dry locks,
+And thou Alessio art of Lucca sprung.
+Therefore than all the rest I scan thee more.”
+
+Then beating on his brain these words he spake:
+“Me thus low down my flatteries have sunk,
+Wherewith I ne’er enough could glut my tongue.”
+
+My leader thus: “A little further stretch
+Thy face, that thou the visage well mayst note
+Of that besotted, sluttish courtezan,
+Who there doth rend her with defiled nails,
+Now crouching down, now risen on her feet.
+
+“Thais is this, the harlot, whose false lip
+Answer’d her doting paramour that ask’d,
+‘Thankest me much!’—‘Say rather wondrously,’
+And seeing this here satiate be our view.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XIX
+
+
+Woe to thee, Simon Magus! woe to you,
+His wretched followers! who the things of God,
+Which should be wedded unto goodness, them,
+Rapacious as ye are, do prostitute
+For gold and silver in adultery!
+Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours
+Is the third chasm. Upon the following vault
+We now had mounted, where the rock impends
+Directly o’er the centre of the foss.
+
+Wisdom Supreme! how wonderful the art,
+Which thou dost manifest in heaven, in earth,
+And in the evil world, how just a meed
+Allotting by thy virtue unto all!
+
+I saw the livid stone, throughout the sides
+And in its bottom full of apertures,
+All equal in their width, and circular each,
+Nor ample less nor larger they appear’d
+Than in Saint John’s fair dome of me belov’d
+Those fram’d to hold the pure baptismal streams,
+One of the which I brake, some few years past,
+To save a whelming infant; and be this
+A seal to undeceive whoever doubts
+The motive of my deed. From out the mouth
+Of every one, emerg’d a sinner’s feet
+And of the legs high upward as the calf
+The rest beneath was hid. On either foot
+The soles were burning, whence the flexile joints
+Glanc’d with such violent motion, as had snapt
+Asunder cords or twisted withs. As flame,
+Feeding on unctuous matter, glides along
+The surface, scarcely touching where it moves;
+So here, from heel to point, glided the flames.
+
+“Master! say who is he, than all the rest
+Glancing in fiercer agony, on whom
+A ruddier flame doth prey?” I thus inquir’d.
+
+“If thou be willing,” he replied, “that I
+Carry thee down, where least the slope bank falls,
+He of himself shall tell thee and his wrongs.”
+
+I then: “As pleases thee to me is best.
+Thou art my lord; and know’st that ne’er I quit
+Thy will: what silence hides that knowest thou.”
+Thereat on the fourth pier we came, we turn’d,
+And on our left descended to the depth,
+A narrow strait and perforated close.
+Nor from his side my leader set me down,
+Till to his orifice he brought, whose limb
+Quiv’ring express’d his pang. “Whoe’er thou art,
+Sad spirit! thus revers’d, and as a stake
+Driv’n in the soil!” I in these words began,
+“If thou be able, utter forth thy voice.”
+
+There stood I like the friar, that doth shrive
+A wretch for murder doom’d, who e’en when fix’d,
+Calleth him back, whence death awhile delays.
+
+He shouted: “Ha! already standest there?
+Already standest there, O Boniface!
+By many a year the writing play’d me false.
+So early dost thou surfeit with the wealth,
+For which thou fearedst not in guile to take
+The lovely lady, and then mangle her?”
+
+I felt as those who, piercing not the drift
+Of answer made them, stand as if expos’d
+In mockery, nor know what to reply,
+When Virgil thus admonish’d: “Tell him quick,
+I am not he, not he, whom thou believ’st.”
+
+And I, as was enjoin’d me, straight replied.
+
+That heard, the spirit all did wrench his feet,
+And sighing next in woeful accent spake:
+“What then of me requirest? If to know
+So much imports thee, who I am, that thou
+Hast therefore down the bank descended, learn
+That in the mighty mantle I was rob’d,
+And of a she-bear was indeed the son,
+So eager to advance my whelps, that there
+My having in my purse above I stow’d,
+And here myself. Under my head are dragg’d
+The rest, my predecessors in the guilt
+Of simony. Stretch’d at their length they lie
+Along an opening in the rock. ’Midst them
+I also low shall fall, soon as he comes,
+For whom I took thee, when so hastily
+I question’d. But already longer time
+Hath pass’d, since my souls kindled, and I thus
+Upturn’d have stood, than is his doom to stand
+Planted with fiery feet. For after him,
+One yet of deeds more ugly shall arrive,
+From forth the west, a shepherd without law,
+Fated to cover both his form and mine.
+He a new Jason shall be call’d, of whom
+In Maccabees we read; and favour such
+As to that priest his king indulgent show’d,
+Shall be of France’s monarch shown to him.”
+
+I know not if I here too far presum’d,
+But in this strain I answer’d: “Tell me now,
+What treasures from St. Peter at the first
+Our Lord demanded, when he put the keys
+Into his charge? Surely he ask’d no more
+But, Follow me! Nor Peter nor the rest
+Or gold or silver of Matthias took,
+When lots were cast upon the forfeit place
+Of the condemned soul. Abide thou then;
+Thy punishment of right is merited:
+And look thou well to that ill-gotten coin,
+Which against Charles thy hardihood inspir’d.
+If reverence of the keys restrain’d me not,
+Which thou in happier time didst hold, I yet
+Severer speech might use. Your avarice
+O’ercasts the world with mourning, under foot
+Treading the good, and raising bad men up.
+Of shepherds, like to you, th’ Evangelist
+Was ware, when her, who sits upon the waves,
+With kings in filthy whoredom he beheld,
+She who with seven heads tower’d at her birth,
+And from ten horns her proof of glory drew,
+Long as her spouse in virtue took delight.
+Of gold and silver ye have made your god,
+Diff’ring wherein from the idolater,
+But he that worships one, a hundred ye?
+Ah, Constantine! to how much ill gave birth,
+Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower,
+Which the first wealthy Father gain’d from thee!”
+
+Meanwhile, as thus I sung, he, whether wrath
+Or conscience smote him, violent upsprang
+Spinning on either sole. I do believe
+My teacher well was pleas’d, with so compos’d
+A lip, he listen’d ever to the sound
+Of the true words I utter’d. In both arms
+He caught, and to his bosom lifting me
+Upward retrac’d the way of his descent.
+
+Nor weary of his weight he press’d me close,
+Till to the summit of the rock we came,
+Our passage from the fourth to the fifth pier.
+His cherish’d burden there gently he plac’d
+Upon the rugged rock and steep, a path
+Not easy for the clamb’ring goat to mount.
+
+Thence to my view another vale appear’d
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XX
+
+
+And now the verse proceeds to torments new,
+Fit argument of this the twentieth strain
+Of the first song, whose awful theme records
+The spirits whelm’d in woe. Earnest I look’d
+Into the depth, that open’d to my view,
+Moisten’d with tears of anguish, and beheld
+A tribe, that came along the hollow vale,
+In silence weeping: such their step as walk
+Quires chanting solemn litanies on earth.
+
+As on them more direct mine eye descends,
+Each wondrously seem’d to be revers’d
+At the neck-bone, so that the countenance
+Was from the reins averted: and because
+None might before him look, they were compell’d
+To’ advance with backward gait. Thus one perhaps
+Hath been by force of palsy clean transpos’d,
+But I ne’er saw it nor believe it so.
+
+Now, reader! think within thyself, so God
+Fruit of thy reading give thee! how I long
+Could keep my visage dry, when I beheld
+Near me our form distorted in such guise,
+That on the hinder parts fall’n from the face
+The tears down-streaming roll’d. Against a rock
+I leant and wept, so that my guide exclaim’d:
+“What, and art thou too witless as the rest?
+Here pity most doth show herself alive,
+When she is dead. What guilt exceedeth his,
+Who with Heaven’s judgment in his passion strives?
+Raise up thy head, raise up, and see the man,
+Before whose eyes earth gap’d in Thebes, when all
+Cried out, ‘Amphiaraus, whither rushest?
+‘Why leavest thou the war?’ He not the less
+Fell ruining far as to Minos down,
+Whose grapple none eludes. Lo! how he makes
+The breast his shoulders, and who once too far
+Before him wish’d to see, now backward looks,
+And treads reverse his path. Tiresias note,
+Who semblance chang’d, when woman he became
+Of male, through every limb transform’d, and then
+Once more behov’d him with his rod to strike
+The two entwining serpents, ere the plumes,
+That mark’d the better sex, might shoot again.
+
+“Aruns, with more his belly facing, comes.
+On Luni’s mountains ’midst the marbles white,
+Where delves Carrara’s hind, who wons beneath,
+A cavern was his dwelling, whence the stars
+And main-sea wide in boundless view he held.
+
+“The next, whose loosen’d tresses overspread
+Her bosom, which thou seest not (for each hair
+On that side grows) was Manto, she who search’d
+Through many regions, and at length her seat
+Fix’d in my native land, whence a short space
+My words detain thy audience. When her sire
+From life departed, and in servitude
+The city dedicate to Bacchus mourn’d,
+Long time she went a wand’rer through the world.
+Aloft in Italy’s delightful land
+A lake there lies, at foot of that proud Alp,
+That o’er the Tyrol locks Germania in,
+Its name Benacus, which a thousand rills,
+Methinks, and more, water between the vale
+Camonica and Garda and the height
+Of Apennine remote. There is a spot
+At midway of that lake, where he who bears
+Of Trento’s flock the past’ral staff, with him
+Of Brescia, and the Veronese, might each
+Passing that way his benediction give.
+A garrison of goodly site and strong
+Peschiera stands, to awe with front oppos’d
+The Bergamese and Brescian, whence the shore
+More slope each way descends. There, whatsoev’er
+Benacus’ bosom holds not, tumbling o’er
+Down falls, and winds a river flood beneath
+Through the green pastures. Soon as in his course
+The steam makes head, Benacus then no more
+They call the name, but Mincius, till at last
+Reaching Governo into Po he falls.
+Not far his course hath run, when a wide flat
+It finds, which overstretchmg as a marsh
+It covers, pestilent in summer oft.
+Hence journeying, the savage maiden saw
+’Midst of the fen a territory waste
+And naked of inhabitants. To shun
+All human converse, here she with her slaves
+Plying her arts remain’d, and liv’d, and left
+Her body tenantless. Thenceforth the tribes,
+Who round were scatter’d, gath’ring to that place
+Assembled; for its strength was great, enclos’d
+On all parts by the fen. On those dead bones
+They rear’d themselves a city, for her sake,
+Calling it Mantua, who first chose the spot,
+Nor ask’d another omen for the name,
+Wherein more numerous the people dwelt,
+Ere Casalodi’s madness by deceit
+Was wrong’d of Pinamonte. If thou hear
+Henceforth another origin assign’d
+Of that my country, I forewarn thee now,
+That falsehood none beguile thee of the truth.”
+
+I answer’d: “Teacher, I conclude thy words
+So certain, that all else shall be to me
+As embers lacking life. But now of these,
+Who here proceed, instruct me, if thou see
+Any that merit more especial note.
+For thereon is my mind alone intent.”
+
+He straight replied: “That spirit, from whose cheek
+The beard sweeps o’er his shoulders brown, what time
+Graecia was emptied of her males, that scarce
+The cradles were supplied, the seer was he
+In Aulis, who with Calchas gave the sign
+When first to cut the cable. Him they nam’d
+Eurypilus: so sings my tragic strain,
+In which majestic measure well thou know’st,
+Who know’st it all. That other, round the loins
+So slender of his shape, was Michael Scot,
+Practis’d in ev’ry slight of magic wile.
+
+“Guido Bonatti see: Asdente mark,
+Who now were willing, he had tended still
+The thread and cordwain; and too late repents.
+
+“See next the wretches, who the needle left,
+The shuttle and the spindle, and became
+Diviners: baneful witcheries they wrought
+With images and herbs. But onward now:
+For now doth Cain with fork of thorns confine
+On either hemisphere, touching the wave
+Beneath the towers of Seville. Yesternight
+The moon was round. Thou mayst remember well:
+For she good service did thee in the gloom
+Of the deep wood.” This said, both onward mov’d.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXI
+
+
+Thus we from bridge to bridge, with other talk,
+The which my drama cares not to rehearse,
+Pass’d on; and to the summit reaching, stood
+To view another gap, within the round
+Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs.
+
+Marvelous darkness shadow’d o’er the place.
+
+In the Venetians’ arsenal as boils
+Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear
+Their unsound vessels; for th’ inclement time
+Sea-faring men restrains, and in that while
+His bark one builds anew, another stops
+The ribs of his, that hath made many a voyage;
+One hammers at the prow, one at the poop;
+This shapeth oars, that other cables twirls,
+The mizen one repairs and main-sail rent
+So not by force of fire but art divine
+Boil’d here a glutinous thick mass, that round
+Lim’d all the shore beneath. I that beheld,
+But therein nought distinguish’d, save the surge,
+Rais’d by the boiling, in one mighty swell
+Heave, and by turns subsiding and fall. While there
+I fix’d my ken below, “Mark! mark!” my guide
+Exclaiming, drew me towards him from the place,
+Wherein I stood. I turn’d myself as one,
+Impatient to behold that which beheld
+He needs must shun, whom sudden fear unmans,
+That he his flight delays not for the view.
+Behind me I discern’d a devil black,
+That running, up advanc’d along the rock.
+Ah! what fierce cruelty his look bespake!
+In act how bitter did he seem, with wings
+Buoyant outstretch’d and feet of nimblest tread!
+His shoulder proudly eminent and sharp
+Was with a sinner charg’d; by either haunch
+He held him, the foot’s sinew griping fast.
+
+“Ye of our bridge!” he cried, “keen-talon’d fiends!
+Lo! one of Santa Zita’s elders! Him
+Whelm ye beneath, while I return for more.
+That land hath store of such. All men are there,
+Except Bonturo, barterers: of ‘no’
+For lucre there an ‘aye’ is quickly made.”
+
+Him dashing down, o’er the rough rock he turn’d,
+Nor ever after thief a mastiff loos’d
+Sped with like eager haste. That other sank
+And forthwith writing to the surface rose.
+But those dark demons, shrouded by the bridge,
+Cried “Here the hallow’d visage saves not: here
+Is other swimming than in Serchio’s wave.
+Wherefore if thou desire we rend thee not,
+Take heed thou mount not o’er the pitch.” This said,
+They grappled him with more than hundred hooks,
+And shouted: “Cover’d thou must sport thee here;
+So, if thou canst, in secret mayst thou filch.”
+
+E’en thus the cook bestirs him, with his grooms,
+To thrust the flesh into the caldron down
+With flesh-hooks, that it float not on the top.
+
+Me then my guide bespake: “Lest they descry,
+That thou art here, behind a craggy rock
+Bend low and screen thee; and whate’er of force
+Be offer’d me, or insult, fear thou not:
+For I am well advis’d, who have been erst
+In the like fray.” Beyond the bridge’s head
+Therewith he pass’d, and reaching the sixth pier,
+Behov’d him then a forehead terror-proof.
+
+With storm and fury, as when dogs rush forth
+Upon the poor man’s back, who suddenly
+From whence he standeth makes his suit; so rush’d
+Those from beneath the arch, and against him
+Their weapons all they pointed. He aloud:
+“Be none of you outrageous: ere your time
+Dare seize me, come forth from amongst you one,
+
+“Who having heard my words, decide he then
+If he shall tear these limbs.” They shouted loud,
+“Go, Malacoda!” Whereat one advanc’d,
+The others standing firm, and as he came,
+“What may this turn avail him?” he exclaim’d.
+
+“Believ’st thou, Malacoda! I had come
+Thus far from all your skirmishing secure,”
+My teacher answered, “without will divine
+And destiny propitious? Pass we then
+For so Heaven’s pleasure is, that I should lead
+Another through this savage wilderness.”
+
+Forthwith so fell his pride, that he let drop
+The instrument of torture at his feet,
+And to the rest exclaim’d: “We have no power
+To strike him.” Then to me my guide: “O thou!
+Who on the bridge among the crags dost sit
+Low crouching, safely now to me return.”
+
+I rose, and towards him moved with speed: the fiends
+Meantime all forward drew: me terror seiz’d
+Lest they should break the compact they had made.
+Thus issuing from Caprona, once I saw
+Th’ infantry dreading, lest his covenant
+The foe should break; so close he hemm’d them round.
+
+I to my leader’s side adher’d, mine eyes
+With fixt and motionless observance bent
+On their unkindly visage. They their hooks
+Protruding, one the other thus bespake:
+“Wilt thou I touch him on the hip?” To whom
+Was answer’d: “Even so; nor miss thy aim.”
+
+But he, who was in conf’rence with my guide,
+Turn’d rapid round, and thus the demon spake:
+“Stay, stay thee, Scarmiglione!” Then to us
+He added: “Further footing to your step
+This rock affords not, shiver’d to the base
+Of the sixth arch. But would you still proceed,
+Up by this cavern go: not distant far,
+Another rock will yield you passage safe.
+Yesterday, later by five hours than now,
+Twelve hundred threescore years and six had fill’d
+The circuit of their course, since here the way
+Was broken. Thitherward I straight dispatch
+Certain of these my scouts, who shall espy
+If any on the surface bask. With them
+Go ye: for ye shall find them nothing fell.
+Come Alichino forth,” with that he cried,
+“And Calcabrina, and Cagnazzo thou!
+The troop of ten let Barbariccia lead.
+With Libicocco Draghinazzo haste,
+Fang’d Ciriatto, Grafflacane fierce,
+And Farfarello, and mad Rubicant.
+Search ye around the bubbling tar. For these,
+In safety lead them, where the other crag
+Uninterrupted traverses the dens.”
+
+I then: “O master! what a sight is there!
+Ah! without escort, journey we alone,
+Which, if thou know the way, I covet not.
+Unless thy prudence fail thee, dost not mark
+How they do gnarl upon us, and their scowl
+Threatens us present tortures?” He replied:
+“I charge thee fear not: let them, as they will,
+Gnarl on: ’t is but in token of their spite
+Against the souls, who mourn in torment steep’d.”
+
+To leftward o’er the pier they turn’d; but each
+Had first between his teeth prest close the tongue,
+Toward their leader for a signal looking,
+Which he with sound obscene triumphant gave.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXII
+
+
+It hath been heretofore my chance to see
+Horsemen with martial order shifting camp,
+To onset sallying, or in muster rang’d,
+Or in retreat sometimes outstretch’d for flight;
+Light-armed squadrons and fleet foragers
+Scouring thy plains, Arezzo! have I seen,
+And clashing tournaments, and tilting jousts,
+Now with the sound of trumpets, now of bells,
+Tabors, or signals made from castled heights,
+And with inventions multiform, our own,
+Or introduc’d from foreign land; but ne’er
+To such a strange recorder I beheld,
+In evolution moving, horse nor foot,
+Nor ship, that tack’d by sign from land or star.
+
+With the ten demons on our way we went;
+Ah fearful company! but in the church
+With saints, with gluttons at the tavern’s mess.
+
+Still earnest on the pitch I gaz’d, to mark
+All things whate’er the chasm contain’d, and those
+Who burn’d within. As dolphins, that, in sign
+To mariners, heave high their arched backs,
+That thence forewarn’d they may advise to save
+Their threaten’d vessels; so, at intervals,
+To ease the pain his back some sinner show’d,
+Then hid more nimbly than the lightning glance.
+
+E’en as the frogs, that of a wat’ry moat
+Stand at the brink, with the jaws only out,
+Their feet and of the trunk all else concealed,
+Thus on each part the sinners stood, but soon
+As Barbariccia was at hand, so they
+Drew back under the wave. I saw, and yet
+My heart doth stagger, one, that waited thus,
+As it befalls that oft one frog remains,
+While the next springs away: and Graffiacan,
+Who of the fiends was nearest, grappling seiz’d
+His clotted locks, and dragg’d him sprawling up,
+That he appear’d to me an otter. Each
+Already by their names I knew, so well
+When they were chosen, I observ’d, and mark’d
+How one the other call’d. “O Rubicant!
+See that his hide thou with thy talons flay,”
+Shouted together all the cursed crew.
+
+Then I: “Inform thee, master! if thou may,
+What wretched soul is this, on whom their hand
+His foes have laid.” My leader to his side
+Approach’d, and whence he came inquir’d, to whom
+Was answer’d thus: “Born in Navarre’s domain
+My mother plac’d me in a lord’s retinue,
+For she had borne me to a losel vile,
+A spendthrift of his substance and himself.
+The good king Thibault after that I serv’d,
+To peculating here my thoughts were turn’d,
+Whereof I give account in this dire heat.”
+
+Straight Ciriatto, from whose mouth a tusk
+Issued on either side, as from a boar,
+Ript him with one of these. ’Twixt evil claws
+The mouse had fall’n: but Barbariccia cried,
+Seizing him with both arms: “Stand thou apart,
+While I do fix him on my prong transpierc’d.”
+Then added, turning to my guide his face,
+“Inquire of him, if more thou wish to learn,
+Ere he again be rent.” My leader thus:
+“Then tell us of the partners in thy guilt;
+Knowest thou any sprung of Latian land
+Under the tar?”—“I parted,” he replied,
+“But now from one, who sojourn’d not far thence;
+So were I under shelter now with him!
+Nor hook nor talon then should scare me more.”—.
+
+“Too long we suffer,” Libicocco cried,
+Then, darting forth a prong, seiz’d on his arm,
+And mangled bore away the sinewy part.
+Him Draghinazzo by his thighs beneath
+Would next have caught, whence angrily their chief,
+Turning on all sides round, with threat’ning brow
+Restrain’d them. When their strife a little ceas’d,
+Of him, who yet was gazing on his wound,
+My teacher thus without delay inquir’d:
+“Who was the spirit, from whom by evil hap
+Parting, as thou has told, thou cam’st to shore?”—
+
+“It was the friar Gomita,” he rejoin’d,
+“He of Gallura, vessel of all guile,
+Who had his master’s enemies in hand,
+And us’d them so that they commend him well.
+Money he took, and them at large dismiss’d.
+So he reports: and in each other charge
+Committed to his keeping, play’d the part
+Of barterer to the height: with him doth herd
+The chief of Logodoro, Michel Zanche.
+Sardinia is a theme, whereof their tongue
+Is never weary. Out! alas! behold
+That other, how he grins! More would I say,
+But tremble lest he mean to maul me sore.”
+
+Their captain then to Farfarello turning,
+Who roll’d his moony eyes in act to strike,
+Rebuk’d him thus: “Off! cursed bird! Avaunt!”—
+
+“If ye desire to see or hear,” he thus
+Quaking with dread resum’d, “or Tuscan spirits
+Or Lombard, I will cause them to appear.
+Meantime let these ill talons bate their fury,
+So that no vengeance they may fear from them,
+And I, remaining in this self-same place,
+Will for myself but one, make sev’n appear,
+When my shrill whistle shall be heard; for so
+Our custom is to call each other up.”
+
+Cagnazzo at that word deriding grinn’d,
+Then wagg’d the head and spake: “Hear his device,
+Mischievous as he is, to plunge him down.”
+
+Whereto he thus, who fail’d not in rich store
+Of nice-wove toils; “Mischief forsooth extreme,
+Meant only to procure myself more woe!”
+
+No longer Alichino then refrain’d,
+But thus, the rest gainsaying, him bespake:
+“If thou do cast thee down, I not on foot
+Will chase thee, but above the pitch will beat
+My plumes. Quit we the vantage ground, and let
+The bank be as a shield, that we may see
+If singly thou prevail against us all.”
+
+Now, reader, of new sport expect to hear!
+
+They each one turn’d his eyes to the’ other shore,
+He first, who was the hardest to persuade.
+The spirit of Navarre chose well his time,
+Planted his feet on land, and at one leap
+Escaping disappointed their resolve.
+
+Them quick resentment stung, but him the most,
+Who was the cause of failure; in pursuit
+He therefore sped, exclaiming; “Thou art caught.”
+
+But little it avail’d: terror outstripp’d
+His following flight: the other plung’d beneath,
+And he with upward pinion rais’d his breast:
+E’en thus the water-fowl, when she perceives
+The falcon near, dives instant down, while he
+Enrag’d and spent retires. That mockery
+In Calcabrina fury stirr’d, who flew
+After him, with desire of strife inflam’d;
+And, for the barterer had ’scap’d, so turn’d
+His talons on his comrade. O’er the dyke
+In grapple close they join’d; but the’ other prov’d
+A goshawk able to rend well his foe;
+
+And in the boiling lake both fell. The heat
+Was umpire soon between them, but in vain
+To lift themselves they strove, so fast were glued
+Their pennons. Barbariccia, as the rest,
+That chance lamenting, four in flight dispatch’d
+From the’ other coast, with all their weapons arm’d.
+They, to their post on each side speedily
+Descending, stretch’d their hooks toward the fiends,
+Who flounder’d, inly burning from their scars:
+And we departing left them to that broil.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXIII
+
+
+In silence and in solitude we went,
+One first, the other following his steps,
+As minor friars journeying on their road.
+
+The present fray had turn’d my thoughts to muse
+Upon old Aesop’s fable, where he told
+What fate unto the mouse and frog befell.
+For language hath not sounds more like in sense,
+Than are these chances, if the origin
+And end of each be heedfully compar’d.
+And as one thought bursts from another forth,
+So afterward from that another sprang,
+Which added doubly to my former fear.
+For thus I reason’d: “These through us have been
+So foil’d, with loss and mock’ry so complete,
+As needs must sting them sore. If anger then
+Be to their evil will conjoin’d, more fell
+They shall pursue us, than the savage hound
+Snatches the leveret, panting ’twixt his jaws.”
+
+Already I perceiv’d my hair stand all
+On end with terror, and look’d eager back.
+
+“Teacher,” I thus began, “if speedily
+Thyself and me thou hide not, much I dread
+Those evil talons. Even now behind
+They urge us: quick imagination works
+So forcibly, that I already feel them.”
+
+He answer’d: “Were I form’d of leaded glass,
+I should not sooner draw unto myself
+Thy outward image, than I now imprint
+That from within. This moment came thy thoughts
+Presented before mine, with similar act
+And count’nance similar, so that from both
+I one design have fram’d. If the right coast
+Incline so much, that we may thence descend
+Into the other chasm, we shall escape
+Secure from this imagined pursuit.”
+
+He had not spoke his purpose to the end,
+When I from far beheld them with spread wings
+Approach to take us. Suddenly my guide
+Caught me, ev’n as a mother that from sleep
+Is by the noise arous’d, and near her sees
+The climbing fires, who snatches up her babe
+And flies ne’er pausing, careful more of him
+Than of herself, that but a single vest
+Clings round her limbs. Down from the jutting beach
+Supine he cast him, to that pendent rock,
+Which closes on one part the other chasm.
+
+Never ran water with such hurrying pace
+Adown the tube to turn a landmill’s wheel,
+When nearest it approaches to the spokes,
+As then along that edge my master ran,
+Carrying me in his bosom, as a child,
+Not a companion. Scarcely had his feet
+Reach’d to the lowest of the bed beneath,
+
+When over us the steep they reach’d; but fear
+In him was none; for that high Providence,
+Which plac’d them ministers of the fifth foss,
+Power of departing thence took from them all.
+
+There in the depth we saw a painted tribe,
+Who pac’d with tardy steps around, and wept,
+Faint in appearance and o’ercome with toil.
+Caps had they on, with hoods, that fell low down
+Before their eyes, in fashion like to those
+Worn by the monks in Cologne. Their outside
+Was overlaid with gold, dazzling to view,
+But leaden all within, and of such weight,
+That Frederick’s compar’d to these were straw.
+Oh, everlasting wearisome attire!
+
+We yet once more with them together turn’d
+To leftward, on their dismal moan intent.
+But by the weight oppress’d, so slowly came
+The fainting people, that our company
+Was chang’d at every movement of the step.
+
+Whence I my guide address’d: “See that thou find
+Some spirit, whose name may by his deeds be known,
+And to that end look round thee as thou go’st.”
+
+Then one, who understood the Tuscan voice,
+Cried after us aloud: “Hold in your feet,
+Ye who so swiftly speed through the dusk air.
+Perchance from me thou shalt obtain thy wish.”
+
+Whereat my leader, turning, me bespake:
+“Pause, and then onward at their pace proceed.”
+
+I staid, and saw two Spirits in whose look
+Impatient eagerness of mind was mark’d
+To overtake me; but the load they bare
+And narrow path retarded their approach.
+
+Soon as arriv’d, they with an eye askance
+Perus’d me, but spake not: then turning each
+To other thus conferring said: “This one
+Seems, by the action of his throat, alive.
+And, be they dead, what privilege allows
+They walk unmantled by the cumbrous stole?”
+
+Then thus to me: “Tuscan, who visitest
+The college of the mourning hypocrites,
+Disdain not to instruct us who thou art.”
+
+“By Arno’s pleasant stream,” I thus replied,
+“In the great city I was bred and grew,
+And wear the body I have ever worn.
+but who are ye, from whom such mighty grief,
+As now I witness, courseth down your cheeks?
+What torment breaks forth in this bitter woe?”
+“Our bonnets gleaming bright with orange hue,”
+One of them answer’d, “are so leaden gross,
+That with their weight they make the balances
+To crack beneath them. Joyous friars we were,
+Bologna’s natives, Catalano I,
+He Loderingo nam’d, and by thy land
+Together taken, as men used to take
+A single and indifferent arbiter,
+To reconcile their strifes. How there we sped,
+Gardingo’s vicinage can best declare.”
+
+“O friars!” I began, “your miseries—”
+But there brake off, for one had caught my eye,
+Fix’d to a cross with three stakes on the ground:
+He, when he saw me, writh’d himself, throughout
+Distorted, ruffling with deep sighs his beard.
+And Catalano, who thereof was ’ware,
+
+Thus spake: “That pierced spirit, whom intent
+Thou view’st, was he who gave the Pharisees
+Counsel, that it were fitting for one man
+To suffer for the people. He doth lie
+Transverse; nor any passes, but him first
+Behoves make feeling trial how each weighs.
+In straits like this along the foss are plac’d
+The father of his consort, and the rest
+Partakers in that council, seed of ill
+And sorrow to the Jews.” I noted then,
+How Virgil gaz’d with wonder upon him,
+Thus abjectly extended on the cross
+In banishment eternal. To the friar
+He next his words address’d: “We pray ye tell,
+If so be lawful, whether on our right
+Lies any opening in the rock, whereby
+We both may issue hence, without constraint
+On the dark angels, that compell’d they come
+To lead us from this depth.” He thus replied:
+“Nearer than thou dost hope, there is a rock
+From the next circle moving, which o’ersteps
+Each vale of horror, save that here his cope
+Is shatter’d. By the ruin ye may mount:
+For on the side it slants, and most the height
+Rises below.” With head bent down awhile
+My leader stood, then spake: “He warn’d us ill,
+Who yonder hangs the sinners on his hook.”
+
+To whom the friar: At Bologna erst
+“I many vices of the devil heard,
+Among the rest was said, ‘He is a liar,
+And the father of lies!’” When he had spoke,
+My leader with large strides proceeded on,
+Somewhat disturb’d with anger in his look.
+
+I therefore left the spirits heavy laden,
+And following, his beloved footsteps mark’d.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXIV
+
+
+In the year’s early nonage, when the sun
+Tempers his tresses in Aquarius’ urn,
+And now towards equal day the nights recede,
+When as the rime upon the earth puts on
+Her dazzling sister’s image, but not long
+Her milder sway endures, then riseth up
+The village hind, whom fails his wintry store,
+And looking out beholds the plain around
+All whiten’d, whence impatiently he smites
+His thighs, and to his hut returning in,
+There paces to and fro, wailing his lot,
+As a discomfited and helpless man;
+Then comes he forth again, and feels new hope
+Spring in his bosom, finding e’en thus soon
+The world hath chang’d its count’nance, grasps his crook,
+And forth to pasture drives his little flock:
+So me my guide dishearten’d when I saw
+His troubled forehead, and so speedily
+That ill was cur’d; for at the fallen bridge
+Arriving, towards me with a look as sweet,
+He turn’d him back, as that I first beheld
+At the steep mountain’s foot. Regarding well
+The ruin, and some counsel first maintain’d
+With his own thought, he open’d wide his arm
+And took me up. As one, who, while he works,
+Computes his labour’s issue, that he seems
+Still to foresee the’ effect, so lifting me
+Up to the summit of one peak, he fix’d
+His eye upon another. “Grapple that,”
+Said he, “but first make proof, if it be such
+As will sustain thee.” For one capp’d with lead
+This were no journey. Scarcely he, though light,
+And I, though onward push’d from crag to crag,
+Could mount. And if the precinct of this coast
+Were not less ample than the last, for him
+I know not, but my strength had surely fail’d.
+But Malebolge all toward the mouth
+Inclining of the nethermost abyss,
+The site of every valley hence requires,
+That one side upward slope, the other fall.
+
+At length the point of our descent we reach’d
+From the last flag: soon as to that arriv’d,
+So was the breath exhausted from my lungs,
+I could no further, but did seat me there.
+
+“Now needs thy best of man;” so spake my guide:
+“For not on downy plumes, nor under shade
+Of canopy reposing, fame is won,
+Without which whosoe’er consumes his days
+Leaveth such vestige of himself on earth,
+As smoke in air or foam upon the wave.
+Thou therefore rise: vanish thy weariness
+By the mind’s effort, in each struggle form’d
+To vanquish, if she suffer not the weight
+Of her corporeal frame to crush her down.
+A longer ladder yet remains to scale.
+From these to have escap’d sufficeth not.
+If well thou note me, profit by my words.”
+
+I straightway rose, and show’d myself less spent
+Than I in truth did feel me. “On,” I cried,
+“For I am stout and fearless.” Up the rock
+Our way we held, more rugged than before,
+Narrower and steeper far to climb. From talk
+I ceas’d not, as we journey’d, so to seem
+Least faint; whereat a voice from the other foss
+Did issue forth, for utt’rance suited ill.
+Though on the arch that crosses there I stood,
+What were the words I knew not, but who spake
+Seem’d mov’d in anger. Down I stoop’d to look,
+But my quick eye might reach not to the depth
+For shrouding darkness; wherefore thus I spake:
+“To the next circle, Teacher, bend thy steps,
+And from the wall dismount we; for as hence
+I hear and understand not, so I see
+Beneath, and naught discern.”—“I answer not,”
+Said he, “but by the deed. To fair request
+Silent performance maketh best return.”
+
+We from the bridge’s head descended, where
+To the eighth mound it joins, and then the chasm
+Opening to view, I saw a crowd within
+Of serpents terrible, so strange of shape
+And hideous, that remembrance in my veins
+Yet shrinks the vital current. Of her sands
+Let Lybia vaunt no more: if Jaculus,
+Pareas and Chelyder be her brood,
+Cenchris and Amphisboena, plagues so dire
+Or in such numbers swarming ne’er she shew’d,
+Not with all Ethiopia, and whate’er
+Above the Erythraean sea is spawn’d.
+
+Amid this dread exuberance of woe
+Ran naked spirits wing’d with horrid fear,
+Nor hope had they of crevice where to hide,
+Or heliotrope to charm them out of view.
+With serpents were their hands behind them bound,
+Which through their reins infix’d the tail and head
+Twisted in folds before. And lo! on one
+Near to our side, darted an adder up,
+And, where the neck is on the shoulders tied,
+Transpierc’d him. Far more quickly than e’er pen
+Wrote O or I, he kindled, burn’d, and chang’d
+To ashes, all pour’d out upon the earth.
+When there dissolv’d he lay, the dust again
+Uproll’d spontaneous, and the self-same form
+Instant resumed. So mighty sages tell,
+The’ Arabian Phoenix, when five hundred years
+Have well nigh circled, dies, and springs forthwith
+Renascent. Blade nor herb throughout his life
+He tastes, but tears of frankincense alone
+And odorous amomum: swaths of nard
+And myrrh his funeral shroud. As one that falls,
+He knows not how, by force demoniac dragg’d
+To earth, or through obstruction fettering up
+In chains invisible the powers of man,
+Who, risen from his trance, gazeth around,
+Bewilder’d with the monstrous agony
+He hath endur’d, and wildly staring sighs;
+So stood aghast the sinner when he rose.
+
+Oh! how severe God’s judgment, that deals out
+Such blows in stormy vengeance! Who he was
+My teacher next inquir’d, and thus in few
+He answer’d: “Vanni Fucci am I call’d,
+Not long since rained down from Tuscany
+To this dire gullet. Me the beastial life
+And not the human pleas’d, mule that I was,
+Who in Pistoia found my worthy den.”
+
+I then to Virgil: “Bid him stir not hence,
+And ask what crime did thrust him hither: once
+A man I knew him choleric and bloody.”
+
+The sinner heard and feign’d not, but towards me
+His mind directing and his face, wherein
+Was dismal shame depictur’d, thus he spake:
+“It grieves me more to have been caught by thee
+In this sad plight, which thou beholdest, than
+When I was taken from the other life.
+I have no power permitted to deny
+What thou inquirest. I am doom’d thus low
+To dwell, for that the sacristy by me
+Was rifled of its goodly ornaments,
+And with the guilt another falsely charged.
+But that thou mayst not joy to see me thus,
+So as thou e’er shalt ’scape this darksome realm
+Open thine ears and hear what I forebode.
+Reft of the Neri first Pistoia pines,
+Then Florence changeth citizens and laws.
+From Valdimagra, drawn by wrathful Mars,
+A vapour rises, wrapt in turbid mists,
+And sharp and eager driveth on the storm
+With arrowy hurtling o’er Piceno’s field,
+Whence suddenly the cloud shall burst, and strike
+Each helpless Bianco prostrate to the ground.
+This have I told, that grief may rend thy heart.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXV
+
+
+When he had spoke, the sinner rais’d his hands
+Pointed in mockery, and cried: “Take them, God!
+I level them at thee!” From that day forth
+The serpents were my friends; for round his neck
+One of then rolling twisted, as it said,
+“Be silent, tongue!” Another to his arms
+Upgliding, tied them, riveting itself
+So close, it took from them the power to move.
+
+Pistoia! Ah Pistoia! why dost doubt
+To turn thee into ashes, cumb’ring earth
+No longer, since in evil act so far
+Thou hast outdone thy seed? I did not mark,
+Through all the gloomy circles of the’ abyss,
+Spirit, that swell’d so proudly ’gainst his God,
+Not him, who headlong fell from Thebes. He fled,
+Nor utter’d more; and after him there came
+A centaur full of fury, shouting, “Where
+Where is the caitiff?” On Maremma’s marsh
+Swarm not the serpent tribe, as on his haunch
+They swarm’d, to where the human face begins.
+Behind his head upon the shoulders lay,
+With open wings, a dragon breathing fire
+On whomsoe’er he met. To me my guide:
+“Cacus is this, who underneath the rock
+Of Aventine spread oft a lake of blood.
+He, from his brethren parted, here must tread
+A different journey, for his fraudful theft
+Of the great herd, that near him stall’d; whence found
+His felon deeds their end, beneath the mace
+Of stout Alcides, that perchance laid on
+A hundred blows, and not the tenth was felt.”
+
+While yet he spake, the centaur sped away:
+And under us three spirits came, of whom
+Nor I nor he was ware, till they exclaim’d;
+“Say who are ye?” We then brake off discourse,
+Intent on these alone. I knew them not;
+But, as it chanceth oft, befell, that one
+Had need to name another. “Where,” said he,
+“Doth Cianfa lurk?” I, for a sign my guide
+Should stand attentive, plac’d against my lips
+The finger lifted. If, O reader! now
+Thou be not apt to credit what I tell,
+No marvel; for myself do scarce allow
+The witness of mine eyes. But as I looked
+Toward them, lo! a serpent with six feet
+Springs forth on one, and fastens full upon him:
+His midmost grasp’d the belly, a forefoot
+Seiz’d on each arm (while deep in either cheek
+He flesh’d his fangs); the hinder on the thighs
+Were spread, ’twixt which the tail inserted curl’d
+Upon the reins behind. Ivy ne’er clasp’d
+A dodder’d oak, as round the other’s limbs
+The hideous monster intertwin’d his own.
+Then, as they both had been of burning wax,
+Each melted into other, mingling hues,
+That which was either now was seen no more.
+Thus up the shrinking paper, ere it burns,
+A brown tint glides, not turning yet to black,
+And the clean white expires. The other two
+Look’d on exclaiming: “Ah, how dost thou change,
+Agnello! See! Thou art nor double now,
+
+“Nor only one.” The two heads now became
+One, and two figures blended in one form
+Appear’d, where both were lost. Of the four lengths
+Two arms were made: the belly and the chest
+The thighs and legs into such members chang’d,
+As never eye hath seen. Of former shape
+All trace was vanish’d. Two yet neither seem’d
+That image miscreate, and so pass’d on
+With tardy steps. As underneath the scourge
+Of the fierce dog-star, that lays bare the fields,
+Shifting from brake to brake, the lizard seems
+A flash of lightning, if he thwart the road,
+So toward th’ entrails of the other two
+Approaching seem’d, an adder all on fire,
+As the dark pepper-grain, livid and swart.
+In that part, whence our life is nourish’d first,
+One he transpierc’d; then down before him fell
+Stretch’d out. The pierced spirit look’d on him
+But spake not; yea stood motionless and yawn’d,
+As if by sleep or fev’rous fit assail’d.
+He ey’d the serpent, and the serpent him.
+One from the wound, the other from the mouth
+Breath’d a thick smoke, whose vap’ry columns join’d.
+
+Lucan in mute attention now may hear,
+Nor thy disastrous fate, Sabellus! tell,
+Nor shine, Nasidius! Ovid now be mute.
+What if in warbling fiction he record
+Cadmus and Arethusa, to a snake
+Him chang’d, and her into a fountain clear,
+I envy not; for never face to face
+Two natures thus transmuted did he sing,
+Wherein both shapes were ready to assume
+The other’s substance. They in mutual guise
+So answer’d, that the serpent split his train
+Divided to a fork, and the pierc’d spirit
+Drew close his steps together, legs and thighs
+Compacted, that no sign of juncture soon
+Was visible: the tail disparted took
+The figure which the spirit lost, its skin
+Soft’ning, his indurated to a rind.
+The shoulders next I mark’d, that ent’ring join’d
+The monster’s arm-pits, whose two shorter feet
+So lengthen’d, as the other’s dwindling shrunk.
+The feet behind then twisting up became
+That part that man conceals, which in the wretch
+Was cleft in twain. While both the shadowy smoke
+With a new colour veils, and generates
+Th’ excrescent pile on one, peeling it off
+From th’ other body, lo! upon his feet
+One upright rose, and prone the other fell.
+Not yet their glaring and malignant lamps
+Were shifted, though each feature chang’d beneath.
+Of him who stood erect, the mounting face
+Retreated towards the temples, and what there
+Superfluous matter came, shot out in ears
+From the smooth cheeks, the rest, not backward dragg’d,
+Of its excess did shape the nose; and swell’d
+Into due size protuberant the lips.
+He, on the earth who lay, meanwhile extends
+His sharpen’d visage, and draws down the ears
+Into the head, as doth the slug his horns.
+His tongue continuous before and apt
+For utt’rance, severs; and the other’s fork
+Closing unites. That done the smoke was laid.
+The soul, transform’d into the brute, glides off,
+Hissing along the vale, and after him
+The other talking sputters; but soon turn’d
+His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few
+Thus to another spake: “Along this path
+Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!”
+
+So saw I fluctuate in successive change
+Th’ unsteady ballast of the seventh hold:
+And here if aught my tongue have swerv’d, events
+So strange may be its warrant. O’er mine eyes
+Confusion hung, and on my thoughts amaze.
+
+Yet ’scap’d they not so covertly, but well
+I mark’d Sciancato: he alone it was
+Of the three first that came, who chang’d not: thou,
+The other’s fate, Gaville, still dost rue.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXVI
+
+
+Florence exult! for thou so mightily
+Hast thriven, that o’er land and sea thy wings
+Thou beatest, and thy name spreads over hell!
+Among the plund’rers such the three I found
+Thy citizens, whence shame to me thy son,
+And no proud honour to thyself redounds.
+
+But if our minds, when dreaming near the dawn,
+Are of the truth presageful, thou ere long
+Shalt feel what Prato, (not to say the rest)
+Would fain might come upon thee; and that chance
+Were in good time, if it befell thee now.
+Would so it were, since it must needs befall!
+For as time wears me, I shall grieve the more.
+
+We from the depth departed; and my guide
+Remounting scal’d the flinty steps, which late
+We downward trac’d, and drew me up the steep.
+Pursuing thus our solitary way
+Among the crags and splinters of the rock,
+Sped not our feet without the help of hands.
+
+Then sorrow seiz’d me, which e’en now revives,
+As my thought turns again to what I saw,
+And, more than I am wont, I rein and curb
+The powers of nature in me, lest they run
+Where Virtue guides not; that if aught of good
+My gentle star, or something better gave me,
+I envy not myself the precious boon.
+
+As in that season, when the sun least veils
+His face that lightens all, what time the fly
+Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then
+Upon some cliff reclin’d, beneath him sees
+Fire-flies innumerous spangling o’er the vale,
+Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies:
+With flames so numberless throughout its space
+Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth
+Was to my view expos’d. As he, whose wrongs
+The bears aveng’d, at its departure saw
+Elijah’s chariot, when the steeds erect
+Rais’d their steep flight for heav’n; his eyes meanwhile,
+Straining pursu’d them, till the flame alone
+Upsoaring like a misty speck he kenn’d;
+E’en thus along the gulf moves every flame,
+A sinner so enfolded close in each,
+That none exhibits token of the theft.
+
+Upon the bridge I forward bent to look,
+And grasp’d a flinty mass, or else had fall’n,
+Though push’d not from the height. The guide, who mark’d
+How I did gaze attentive, thus began:
+
+“Within these ardours are the spirits, each
+Swath’d in confining fire.”—“Master, thy word,”
+I answer’d, “hath assur’d me; yet I deem’d
+Already of the truth, already wish’d
+To ask thee, who is in yon fire, that comes
+So parted at the summit, as it seem’d
+Ascending from that funeral pile, where lay
+The Theban brothers?” He replied: “Within
+Ulysses there and Diomede endure
+Their penal tortures, thus to vengeance now
+Together hasting, as erewhile to wrath.
+These in the flame with ceaseless groans deplore
+The ambush of the horse, that open’d wide
+A portal for that goodly seed to pass,
+Which sow’d imperial Rome; nor less the guile
+Lament they, whence of her Achilles ’reft
+Deidamia yet in death complains.
+And there is rued the stratagem, that Troy
+Of her Palladium spoil’d.”—“If they have power
+Of utt’rance from within these sparks,” said I,
+“O master! think my prayer a thousand fold
+In repetition urg’d, that thou vouchsafe
+To pause, till here the horned flame arrive.
+See, how toward it with desire I bend.”
+
+He thus: “Thy prayer is worthy of much praise,
+And I accept it therefore: but do thou
+Thy tongue refrain: to question them be mine,
+For I divine thy wish: and they perchance,
+For they were Greeks, might shun discourse with thee.”
+
+When there the flame had come, where time and place
+Seem’d fitting to my guide, he thus began:
+“O ye, who dwell two spirits in one fire!
+If living I of you did merit aught,
+Whate’er the measure were of that desert,
+When in the world my lofty strain I pour’d,
+Move ye not on, till one of you unfold
+In what clime death o’ertook him self-destroy’d.”
+
+Of the old flame forthwith the greater horn
+Began to roll, murmuring, as a fire
+That labours with the wind, then to and fro
+Wagging the top, as a tongue uttering sounds,
+Threw out its voice, and spake: “When I escap’d
+From Circe, who beyond a circling year
+Had held me near Caieta, by her charms,
+Ere thus Aeneas yet had nam’d the shore,
+Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
+Of my old father, nor return of love,
+That should have crown’d Penelope with joy,
+Could overcome in me the zeal I had
+T’ explore the world, and search the ways of life,
+Man’s evil and his virtue. Forth I sail’d
+Into the deep illimitable main,
+With but one bark, and the small faithful band
+That yet cleav’d to me. As Iberia far,
+Far as Morocco either shore I saw,
+And the Sardinian and each isle beside
+Which round that ocean bathes. Tardy with age
+Were I and my companions, when we came
+To the strait pass, where Hercules ordain’d
+The bound’ries not to be o’erstepp’d by man.
+The walls of Seville to my right I left,
+On the’ other hand already Ceuta past.
+
+“O brothers!” I began, “who to the west
+Through perils without number now have reach’d,
+To this the short remaining watch, that yet
+Our senses have to wake, refuse not proof
+Of the unpeopled world, following the track
+Of Phoebus. Call to mind from whence we sprang:
+Ye were not form’d to live the life of brutes
+But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.
+With these few words I sharpen’d for the voyage
+The mind of my associates, that I then
+Could scarcely have withheld them. To the dawn
+Our poop we turn’d, and for the witless flight
+Made our oars wings, still gaining on the left.
+Each star of the’ other pole night now beheld,
+And ours so low, that from the ocean-floor
+It rose not. Five times re-illum’d, as oft
+Vanish’d the light from underneath the moon
+Since the deep way we enter’d, when from far
+Appear’d a mountain dim, loftiest methought
+Of all I e’er beheld. Joy seiz’d us straight,
+But soon to mourning changed. From the new land
+A whirlwind sprung, and at her foremost side
+Did strike the vessel. Thrice it whirl’d her round
+With all the waves, the fourth time lifted up
+The poop, and sank the prow: so fate decreed:
+And over us the booming billow clos’d.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XVII
+
+
+Now upward rose the flame, and still’d its light
+To speak no more, and now pass’d on with leave
+From the mild poet gain’d, when following came
+Another, from whose top a sound confus’d,
+Forth issuing, drew our eyes that way to look.
+
+As the Sicilian bull, that rightfully
+His cries first echoed, who had shap’d its mould,
+Did so rebellow, with the voice of him
+Tormented, that the brazen monster seem’d
+Pierc’d through with pain; thus while no way they found
+Nor avenue immediate through the flame,
+Into its language turn’d the dismal words:
+But soon as they had won their passage forth,
+Up from the point, which vibrating obey’d
+Their motion at the tongue, these sounds we heard:
+“O thou! to whom I now direct my voice!
+That lately didst exclaim in Lombard phrase,
+
+“Depart thou, I solicit thee no more,
+Though somewhat tardy I perchance arrive
+Let it not irk thee here to pause awhile,
+And with me parley: lo! it irks not me
+And yet I burn. If but e’en now thou fall
+into this blind world, from that pleasant land
+Of Latium, whence I draw my sum of guilt,
+Tell me if those, who in Romagna dwell,
+Have peace or war. For of the mountains there
+Was I, betwixt Urbino and the height,
+Whence Tyber first unlocks his mighty flood.”
+
+Leaning I listen’d yet with heedful ear,
+When, as he touch’d my side, the leader thus:
+“Speak thou: he is a Latian.” My reply
+Was ready, and I spake without delay:
+
+“O spirit! who art hidden here below!
+Never was thy Romagna without war
+In her proud tyrants’ bosoms, nor is now:
+But open war there left I none. The state,
+Ravenna hath maintain’d this many a year,
+Is steadfast. There Polenta’s eagle broods,
+And in his broad circumference of plume
+O’ershadows Cervia. The green talons grasp
+The land, that stood erewhile the proof so long,
+And pil’d in bloody heap the host of France.
+
+“The’ old mastiff of Verruchio and the young,
+That tore Montagna in their wrath, still make,
+Where they are wont, an augre of their fangs.
+
+“Lamone’s city and Santerno’s range
+Under the lion of the snowy lair.
+Inconstant partisan! that changeth sides,
+Or ever summer yields to winter’s frost.
+And she, whose flank is wash’d of Savio’s wave,
+As ’twixt the level and the steep she lies,
+Lives so ’twixt tyrant power and liberty.
+
+“Now tell us, I entreat thee, who art thou?
+Be not more hard than others. In the world,
+So may thy name still rear its forehead high.”
+
+Then roar’d awhile the fire, its sharpen’d point
+On either side wav’d, and thus breath’d at last:
+“If I did think, my answer were to one,
+Who ever could return unto the world,
+This flame should rest unshaken. But since ne’er,
+If true be told me, any from this depth
+Has found his upward way, I answer thee,
+Nor fear lest infamy record the words.
+
+“A man of arms at first, I cloth’d me then
+In good Saint Francis’ girdle, hoping so
+T’ have made amends. And certainly my hope
+Had fail’d not, but that he, whom curses light on,
+The’ high priest again seduc’d me into sin.
+And how and wherefore listen while I tell.
+Long as this spirit mov’d the bones and pulp
+My mother gave me, less my deeds bespake
+The nature of the lion than the fox.
+All ways of winding subtlety I knew,
+And with such art conducted, that the sound
+Reach’d the world’s limit. Soon as to that part
+Of life I found me come, when each behoves
+To lower sails and gather in the lines;
+That which before had pleased me then I rued,
+And to repentance and confession turn’d;
+Wretch that I was! and well it had bested me!
+The chief of the new Pharisees meantime,
+Waging his warfare near the Lateran,
+Not with the Saracens or Jews (his foes
+All Christians were, nor against Acre one
+Had fought, nor traffic’d in the Soldan’s land),
+He his great charge nor sacred ministry
+In himself, rev’renc’d, nor in me that cord,
+Which us’d to mark with leanness whom it girded.
+As in Socrate, Constantine besought
+To cure his leprosy Sylvester’s aid,
+So me to cure the fever of his pride
+This man besought: my counsel to that end
+He ask’d: and I was silent: for his words
+Seem’d drunken: but forthwith he thus resum’d:
+‘From thy heart banish fear: of all offence
+I hitherto absolve thee. In return,
+Teach me my purpose so to execute,
+That Penestrino cumber earth no more.
+Heav’n, as thou knowest, I have power to shut
+And open: and the keys are therefore twain,
+The which my predecessor meanly priz’d.’”
+
+Then, yielding to the forceful arguments,
+Of silence as more perilous I deem’d,
+And answer’d: “Father! since thou washest me
+Clear of that guilt wherein I now must fall,
+Large promise with performance scant, be sure,
+Shall make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.”
+
+“When I was number’d with the dead, then came
+Saint Francis for me; but a cherub dark
+He met, who cried: ‘Wrong me not; he is mine,
+And must below to join the wretched crew,
+For the deceitful counsel which he gave.
+E’er since I watch’d him, hov’ring at his hair,
+No power can the impenitent absolve;
+Nor to repent and will at once consist,
+By contradiction absolute forbid.’”
+Oh mis’ry! how I shook myself, when he
+Seiz’d me, and cried, “Thou haply thought’st me not
+A disputant in logic so exact.”
+To Minos down he bore me, and the judge
+Twin’d eight times round his callous back the tail,
+Which biting with excess of rage, he spake:
+“This is a guilty soul, that in the fire
+Must vanish. Hence perdition-doom’d I rove
+A prey to rankling sorrow in this garb.”
+
+When he had thus fulfill’d his words, the flame
+In dolour parted, beating to and fro,
+And writhing its sharp horn. We onward went,
+I and my leader, up along the rock,
+Far as another arch, that overhangs
+The foss, wherein the penalty is paid
+Of those, who load them with committed sin.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXVIII
+
+
+Who, e’en in words unfetter’d, might at full
+Tell of the wounds and blood that now I saw,
+Though he repeated oft the tale? No tongue
+So vast a theme could equal, speech and thought
+Both impotent alike. If in one band
+Collected, stood the people all, who e’er
+Pour’d on Apulia’s happy soil their blood,
+Slain by the Trojans, and in that long war
+When of the rings the measur’d booty made
+A pile so high, as Rome’s historian writes
+Who errs not, with the multitude, that felt
+The grinding force of Guiscard’s Norman steel,
+And those the rest, whose bones are gather’d yet
+At Ceperano, there where treachery
+Branded th’ Apulian name, or where beyond
+Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms
+The old Alardo conquer’d; and his limbs
+One were to show transpierc’d, another his
+Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this
+Were but a thing of nought, to the’ hideous sight
+Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost
+Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide,
+As one I mark’d, torn from the chin throughout
+Down to the hinder passage: ’twixt the legs
+Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay
+Open to view, and wretched ventricle,
+That turns th’ englutted aliment to dross.
+
+Whilst eagerly I fix on him my gaze,
+He ey’d me, with his hands laid his breast bare,
+And cried; “Now mark how I do rip me! lo!
+
+“How is Mohammed mangled! before me
+Walks Ali weeping, from the chin his face
+Cleft to the forelock; and the others all
+Whom here thou seest, while they liv’d, did sow
+Scandal and schism, and therefore thus are rent.
+A fiend is here behind, who with his sword
+Hacks us thus cruelly, slivering again
+Each of this ream, when we have compast round
+The dismal way, for first our gashes close
+Ere we repass before him. But say who
+Art thou, that standest musing on the rock,
+Haply so lingering to delay the pain
+Sentenc’d upon thy crimes?”—“Him death not yet,”
+My guide rejoin’d, “hath overta’en, nor sin
+Conducts to torment; but, that he may make
+Full trial of your state, I who am dead
+Must through the depths of hell, from orb to orb,
+Conduct him. Trust my words, for they are true.”
+
+More than a hundred spirits, when that they heard,
+Stood in the foss to mark me, through amazed,
+Forgetful of their pangs. “Thou, who perchance
+Shalt shortly view the sun, this warning thou
+Bear to Dolcino: bid him, if he wish not
+Here soon to follow me, that with good store
+Of food he arm him, lest impris’ning snows
+Yield him a victim to Novara’s power,
+No easy conquest else.” With foot uprais’d
+For stepping, spake Mohammed, on the ground
+Then fix’d it to depart. Another shade,
+Pierc’d in the throat, his nostrils mutilate
+E’en from beneath the eyebrows, and one ear
+Lopt off, who with the rest through wonder stood
+Gazing, before the rest advanc’d, and bar’d
+His wind-pipe, that without was all o’ersmear’d
+With crimson stain. “O thou!” said he, “whom sin
+Condemns not, and whom erst (unless too near
+Resemblance do deceive me) I aloft
+Have seen on Latian ground, call thou to mind
+Piero of Medicina, if again
+Returning, thou behold’st the pleasant land
+That from Vercelli slopes to Mercabo;
+
+“And there instruct the twain, whom Fano boasts
+Her worthiest sons, Guido and Angelo,
+That if ’t is giv’n us here to scan aright
+The future, they out of life’s tenement
+Shall be cast forth, and whelm’d under the waves
+Near to Cattolica, through perfidy
+Of a fell tyrant. ’Twixt the Cyprian isle
+And Balearic, ne’er hath Neptune seen
+An injury so foul, by pirates done
+Or Argive crew of old. That one-ey’d traitor
+(Whose realm there is a spirit here were fain
+His eye had still lack’d sight of) them shall bring
+To conf’rence with him, then so shape his end,
+That they shall need not ’gainst Focara’s wind
+Offer up vow nor pray’r.” I answering thus:
+
+“Declare, as thou dost wish that I above
+May carry tidings of thee, who is he,
+In whom that sight doth wake such sad remembrance?”
+
+Forthwith he laid his hand on the cheek-bone
+Of one, his fellow-spirit, and his jaws
+Expanding, cried: “Lo! this is he I wot of;
+He speaks not for himself: the outcast this
+Who overwhelm’d the doubt in Caesar’s mind,
+Affirming that delay to men prepar’d
+Was ever harmful.” Oh how terrified
+Methought was Curio, from whose throat was cut
+The tongue, which spake that hardy word. Then one
+Maim’d of each hand, uplifted in the gloom
+The bleeding stumps, that they with gory spots
+Sullied his face, and cried: “‘Remember thee
+Of Mosca, too, I who, alas! exclaim’d,
+‘The deed once done there is an end,’ that prov’d
+A seed of sorrow to the Tuscan race.”
+
+I added: “Ay, and death to thine own tribe.”
+
+Whence heaping woe on woe he hurried off,
+As one grief stung to madness. But I there
+Still linger’d to behold the troop, and saw
+Things, such as I may fear without more proof
+To tell of, but that conscience makes me firm,
+The boon companion, who her strong breast-plate
+Buckles on him, that feels no guilt within
+And bids him on and fear not. Without doubt
+I saw, and yet it seems to pass before me,
+A headless trunk, that even as the rest
+Of the sad flock pac’d onward. By the hair
+It bore the sever’d member, lantern-wise
+Pendent in hand, which look’d at us and said,
+
+“Woe’s me!” The spirit lighted thus himself,
+And two there were in one, and one in two.
+How that may be he knows who ordereth so.
+
+When at the bridge’s foot direct he stood,
+His arm aloft he rear’d, thrusting the head
+Full in our view, that nearer we might hear
+The words, which thus it utter’d: “Now behold
+This grievous torment, thou, who breathing go’st
+To spy the dead; behold if any else
+Be terrible as this. And that on earth
+Thou mayst bear tidings of me, know that I
+Am Bertrand, he of Born, who gave King John
+The counsel mischievous. Father and son
+I set at mutual war. For Absalom
+And David more did not Ahitophel,
+Spurring them on maliciously to strife.
+For parting those so closely knit, my brain
+Parted, alas! I carry from its source,
+That in this trunk inhabits. Thus the law
+Of retribution fiercely works in me.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXIX
+
+
+So were mine eyes inebriate with view
+Of the vast multitude, whom various wounds
+Disfigur’d, that they long’d to stay and weep.
+
+But Virgil rous’d me: “What yet gazest on?
+Wherefore doth fasten yet thy sight below
+Among the maim’d and miserable shades?
+Thou hast not shewn in any chasm beside
+This weakness. Know, if thou wouldst number them
+That two and twenty miles the valley winds
+Its circuit, and already is the moon
+Beneath our feet: the time permitted now
+Is short, and more not seen remains to see.”
+
+“If thou,” I straight replied, “hadst weigh’d the cause
+For which I look’d, thou hadst perchance excus’d
+The tarrying still.” My leader part pursu’d
+His way, the while I follow’d, answering him,
+And adding thus: “Within that cave I deem,
+Whereon so fixedly I held my ken,
+There is a spirit dwells, one of my blood,
+Wailing the crime that costs him now so dear.”
+
+Then spake my master: “Let thy soul no more
+Afflict itself for him. Direct elsewhere
+Its thought, and leave him. At the bridge’s foot
+I mark’d how he did point with menacing look
+At thee, and heard him by the others nam’d
+Geri of Bello. Thou so wholly then
+Wert busied with his spirit, who once rul’d
+The towers of Hautefort, that thou lookedst not
+That way, ere he was gone.”—“O guide belov’d!
+His violent death yet unaveng’d,” said I,
+“By any, who are partners in his shame,
+Made him contemptuous: therefore, as I think,
+He pass’d me speechless by; and doing so
+Hath made me more compassionate his fate.”
+
+So we discours’d to where the rock first show’d
+The other valley, had more light been there,
+E’en to the lowest depth. Soon as we came
+O’er the last cloister in the dismal rounds
+Of Malebolge, and the brotherhood
+Were to our view expos’d, then many a dart
+Of sore lament assail’d me, headed all
+With points of thrilling pity, that I clos’d
+Both ears against the volley with mine hands.
+
+As were the torment, if each lazar-house
+Of Valdichiana, in the sultry time
+’Twixt July and September, with the isle
+Sardinia and Maremma’s pestilent fen,
+Had heap’d their maladies all in one foss
+Together; such was here the torment: dire
+The stench, as issuing steams from fester’d limbs.
+
+We on the utmost shore of the long rock
+Descended still to leftward. Then my sight
+Was livelier to explore the depth, wherein
+The minister of the most mighty Lord,
+All-searching Justice, dooms to punishment
+The forgers noted on her dread record.
+
+More rueful was it not methinks to see
+The nation in Aegina droop, what time
+Each living thing, e’en to the little worm,
+All fell, so full of malice was the air
+(And afterward, as bards of yore have told,
+The ancient people were restor’d anew
+From seed of emmets) than was here to see
+The spirits, that languish’d through the murky vale
+Up-pil’d on many a stack. Confus’d they lay,
+One o’er the belly, o’er the shoulders one
+Roll’d of another; sideling crawl’d a third
+Along the dismal pathway. Step by step
+We journey’d on, in silence looking round
+And list’ning those diseas’d, who strove in vain
+To lift their forms. Then two I mark’d, that sat
+Propp’d ’gainst each other, as two brazen pans
+Set to retain the heat. From head to foot,
+A tetter bark’d them round. Nor saw I e’er
+Groom currying so fast, for whom his lord
+Impatient waited, or himself perchance
+Tir’d with long watching, as of these each one
+Plied quickly his keen nails, through furiousness
+Of ne’er abated pruriency. The crust
+Came drawn from underneath in flakes, like scales
+Scrap’d from the bream or fish of broader mail.
+
+“O thou, who with thy fingers rendest off
+Thy coat of proof,” thus spake my guide to one,
+“And sometimes makest tearing pincers of them,
+Tell me if any born of Latian land
+Be among these within: so may thy nails
+Serve thee for everlasting to this toil.”
+
+“Both are of Latium,” weeping he replied,
+“Whom tortur’d thus thou seest: but who art thou
+That hast inquir’d of us?” To whom my guide:
+“One that descend with this man, who yet lives,
+From rock to rock, and show him hell’s abyss.”
+
+Then started they asunder, and each turn’d
+Trembling toward us, with the rest, whose ear
+Those words redounding struck. To me my liege
+Address’d him: “Speak to them whate’er thou list.”
+
+And I therewith began: “So may no time
+Filch your remembrance from the thoughts of men
+In th’ upper world, but after many suns
+Survive it, as ye tell me, who ye are,
+And of what race ye come. Your punishment,
+Unseemly and disgustful in its kind,
+Deter you not from opening thus much to me.”
+
+“Arezzo was my dwelling,” answer’d one,
+“And me Albero of Sienna brought
+To die by fire; but that, for which I died,
+Leads me not here. True is in sport I told him,
+That I had learn’d to wing my flight in air.
+And he admiring much, as he was void
+Of wisdom, will’d me to declare to him
+The secret of mine art: and only hence,
+Because I made him not a Daedalus,
+Prevail’d on one suppos’d his sire to burn me.
+But Minos to this chasm last of the ten,
+For that I practis’d alchemy on earth,
+Has doom’d me. Him no subterfuge eludes.”
+
+Then to the bard I spake: “Was ever race
+Light as Sienna’s? Sure not France herself
+Can show a tribe so frivolous and vain.”
+
+The other leprous spirit heard my words,
+And thus return’d: “Be Stricca from this charge
+Exempted, he who knew so temp’rately
+To lay out fortune’s gifts; and Niccolo
+Who first the spice’s costly luxury
+Discover’d in that garden, where such seed
+Roots deepest in the soil: and be that troop
+Exempted, with whom Caccia of Asciano
+Lavish’d his vineyards and wide-spreading woods,
+And his rare wisdom Abbagliato show’d
+A spectacle for all. That thou mayst know
+Who seconds thee against the Siennese
+Thus gladly, bend this way thy sharpen’d sight,
+That well my face may answer to thy ken;
+So shalt thou see I am Capocchio’s ghost,
+Who forg’d transmuted metals by the power
+Of alchemy; and if I scan thee right,
+Thus needs must well remember how I aped
+Creative nature by my subtle art.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXX
+
+
+What time resentment burn’d in Juno’s breast
+For Semele against the Theban blood,
+As more than once in dire mischance was rued,
+Such fatal frenzy seiz’d on Athamas,
+That he his spouse beholding with a babe
+Laden on either arm, “Spread out,” he cried,
+“The meshes, that I take the lioness
+And the young lions at the pass:” then forth
+Stretch’d he his merciless talons, grasping one,
+One helpless innocent, Learchus nam’d,
+Whom swinging down he dash’d upon a rock,
+And with her other burden self-destroy’d
+The hapless mother plung’d: and when the pride
+Of all-presuming Troy fell from its height,
+By fortune overwhelm’d, and the old king
+With his realm perish’d, then did Hecuba,
+A wretch forlorn and captive, when she saw
+Polyxena first slaughter’d, and her son,
+Her Polydorus, on the wild sea-beach
+Next met the mourner’s view, then reft of sense
+Did she run barking even as a dog;
+Such mighty power had grief to wrench her soul.
+Bet ne’er the Furies or of Thebes or Troy
+With such fell cruelty were seen, their goads
+Infixing in the limbs of man or beast,
+As now two pale and naked ghost I saw
+That gnarling wildly scamper’d, like the swine
+Excluded from his stye. One reach’d Capocchio,
+And in the neck-joint sticking deep his fangs,
+Dragg’d him, that o’er the solid pavement rubb’d
+His belly stretch’d out prone. The other shape,
+He of Arezzo, there left trembling, spake;
+“That sprite of air is Schicchi; in like mood
+Of random mischief vent he still his spite.”
+
+To whom I answ’ring: “Oh! as thou dost hope,
+The other may not flesh its jaws on thee,
+Be patient to inform us, who it is,
+Ere it speed hence.”—“That is the ancient soul
+Of wretched Myrrha,” he replied, “who burn’d
+With most unholy flame for her own sire,
+
+“And a false shape assuming, so perform’d
+The deed of sin; e’en as the other there,
+That onward passes, dar’d to counterfeit
+Donati’s features, to feign’d testament
+The seal affixing, that himself might gain,
+For his own share, the lady of the herd.”
+
+When vanish’d the two furious shades, on whom
+Mine eye was held, I turn’d it back to view
+The other cursed spirits. One I saw
+In fashion like a lute, had but the groin
+Been sever’d, where it meets the forked part.
+Swoln dropsy, disproportioning the limbs
+With ill-converted moisture, that the paunch
+Suits not the visage, open’d wide his lips
+Gasping as in the hectic man for drought,
+One towards the chin, the other upward curl’d.
+
+“O ye, who in this world of misery,
+Wherefore I know not, are exempt from pain,”
+Thus he began, “attentively regard
+Adamo’s woe. When living, full supply
+Ne’er lack’d me of what most I coveted;
+One drop of water now, alas! I crave.
+The rills, that glitter down the grassy slopes
+Of Casentino, making fresh and soft
+The banks whereby they glide to Arno’s stream,
+Stand ever in my view; and not in vain;
+For more the pictur’d semblance dries me up,
+Much more than the disease, which makes the flesh
+Desert these shrivel’d cheeks. So from the place,
+Where I transgress’d, stern justice urging me,
+Takes means to quicken more my lab’ring sighs.
+There is Romena, where I falsified
+The metal with the Baptist’s form imprest,
+For which on earth I left my body burnt.
+But if I here might see the sorrowing soul
+Of Guido, Alessandro, or their brother,
+For Branda’s limpid spring I would not change
+The welcome sight. One is e’en now within,
+If truly the mad spirits tell, that round
+Are wand’ring. But wherein besteads me that?
+My limbs are fetter’d. Were I but so light,
+That I each hundred years might move one inch,
+I had set forth already on this path,
+Seeking him out amidst the shapeless crew,
+Although eleven miles it wind, not more
+Than half of one across. They brought me down
+Among this tribe; induc’d by them I stamp’d
+The florens with three carats of alloy.”
+
+“Who are that abject pair,” I next inquir’d,
+“That closely bounding thee upon thy right
+Lie smoking, like a band in winter steep’d
+In the chill stream?”—“When to this gulf I dropt,”
+He answer’d, “here I found them; since that hour
+They have not turn’d, nor ever shall, I ween,
+Till time hath run his course. One is that dame
+The false accuser of the Hebrew youth;
+Sinon the other, that false Greek from Troy.
+Sharp fever drains the reeky moistness out,
+In such a cloud upsteam’d.” When that he heard,
+One, gall’d perchance to be so darkly nam’d,
+With clench’d hand smote him on the braced paunch,
+That like a drum resounded: but forthwith
+Adamo smote him on the face, the blow
+Returning with his arm, that seem’d as hard.
+
+“Though my o’erweighty limbs have ta’en from me
+The power to move,” said he, “I have an arm
+At liberty for such employ.” To whom
+Was answer’d: “When thou wentest to the fire,
+Thou hadst it not so ready at command,
+Then readier when it coin’d th’ impostor gold.”
+
+And thus the dropsied: “Ay, now speak’st thou true.
+But there thou gav’st not such true testimony,
+When thou wast question’d of the truth, at Troy.”
+
+“If I spake false, thou falsely stamp’dst the coin,”
+Said Sinon; “I am here but for one fault,
+And thou for more than any imp beside.”
+
+“Remember,” he replied, “O perjur’d one,
+The horse remember, that did teem with death,
+And all the world be witness to thy guilt.”
+
+“To thine,” return’d the Greek, “witness the thirst
+Whence thy tongue cracks, witness the fluid mound,
+Rear’d by thy belly up before thine eyes,
+A mass corrupt.” To whom the coiner thus:
+“Thy mouth gapes wide as ever to let pass
+Its evil saying. Me if thirst assails,
+Yet I am stuff’d with moisture. Thou art parch’d,
+Pains rack thy head, no urging would’st thou need
+To make thee lap Narcissus’ mirror up.”
+
+I was all fix’d to listen, when my guide
+Admonish’d: “Now beware: a little more.
+And I do quarrel with thee.” I perceiv’d
+How angrily he spake, and towards him turn’d
+With shame so poignant, as remember’d yet
+Confounds me. As a man that dreams of harm
+Befall’n him, dreaming wishes it a dream,
+And that which is, desires as if it were not,
+Such then was I, who wanting power to speak
+Wish’d to excuse myself, and all the while
+Excus’d me, though unweeting that I did.
+
+“More grievous fault than thine has been, less shame,”
+My master cried, “might expiate. Therefore cast
+All sorrow from thy soul; and if again
+Chance bring thee, where like conference is held,
+Think I am ever at thy side. To hear
+Such wrangling is a joy for vulgar minds.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXXI
+
+
+The very tongue, whose keen reproof before
+Had wounded me, that either cheek was stain’d,
+Now minister’d my cure. So have I heard,
+Achilles and his father’s javelin caus’d
+Pain first, and then the boon of health restor’d.
+
+Turning our back upon the vale of woe,
+W cross’d th’ encircled mound in silence. There
+Was twilight dim, that far long the gloom
+Mine eye advanc’d not: but I heard a horn
+Sounded aloud. The peal it blew had made
+The thunder feeble. Following its course
+The adverse way, my strained eyes were bent
+On that one spot. So terrible a blast
+Orlando blew not, when that dismal rout
+O’erthrew the host of Charlemagne, and quench’d
+His saintly warfare. Thitherward not long
+My head was rais’d, when many lofty towers
+Methought I spied. “Master,” said I, “what land
+Is this?” He answer’d straight: “Too long a space
+Of intervening darkness has thine eye
+To traverse: thou hast therefore widely err’d
+In thy imagining. Thither arriv’d
+Thou well shalt see, how distance can delude
+The sense. A little therefore urge thee on.”
+
+Then tenderly he caught me by the hand;
+“Yet know,” said he, “ere farther we advance,
+That it less strange may seem, these are not towers,
+But giants. In the pit they stand immers’d,
+Each from his navel downward, round the bank.”
+
+As when a fog disperseth gradually,
+Our vision traces what the mist involves
+Condens’d in air; so piercing through the gross
+And gloomy atmosphere, as more and more
+We near’d toward the brink, mine error fled,
+And fear came o’er me. As with circling round
+Of turrets, Montereggion crowns his walls,
+E’en thus the shore, encompassing th’ abyss,
+Was turreted with giants, half their length
+Uprearing, horrible, whom Jove from heav’n
+Yet threatens, when his mutt’ring thunder rolls.
+
+Of one already I descried the face,
+Shoulders, and breast, and of the belly huge
+Great part, and both arms down along his ribs.
+
+All-teeming nature, when her plastic hand
+Left framing of these monsters, did display
+Past doubt her wisdom, taking from mad War
+Such slaves to do his bidding; and if she
+Repent her not of th’ elephant and whale,
+Who ponders well confesses her therein
+Wiser and more discreet; for when brute force
+And evil will are back’d with subtlety,
+Resistance none avails. His visage seem’d
+In length and bulk, as doth the pine, that tops
+Saint Peter’s Roman fane; and th’ other bones
+Of like proportion, so that from above
+The bank, which girdled him below, such height
+Arose his stature, that three Friezelanders
+Had striv’n in vain to reach but to his hair.
+Full thirty ample palms was he expos’d
+Downward from whence a man his garments loops.
+“Raphel bai ameth sabi almi,”
+So shouted his fierce lips, which sweeter hymns
+Became not; and my guide address’d him thus:
+
+“O senseless spirit! let thy horn for thee
+Interpret: therewith vent thy rage, if rage
+Or other passion wring thee. Search thy neck,
+There shalt thou find the belt that binds it on.
+Wild spirit! lo, upon thy mighty breast
+Where hangs the baldrick!” Then to me he spake:
+“He doth accuse himself. Nimrod is this,
+Through whose ill counsel in the world no more
+One tongue prevails. But pass we on, nor waste
+Our words; for so each language is to him,
+As his to others, understood by none.”
+
+Then to the leftward turning sped we forth,
+And at a sling’s throw found another shade
+Far fiercer and more huge. I cannot say
+What master hand had girt him; but he held
+Behind the right arm fetter’d, and before
+The other with a chain, that fasten’d him
+From the neck down, and five times round his form
+Apparent met the wreathed links. “This proud one
+Would of his strength against almighty Jove
+Make trial,” said my guide; “whence he is thus
+Requited: Ephialtes him they call.
+
+“Great was his prowess, when the giants brought
+Fear on the gods: those arms, which then he piled,
+Now moves he never.” Forthwith I return’d:
+“Fain would I, if ’t were possible, mine eyes
+Of Briareus immeasurable gain’d
+Experience next.” He answer’d: “Thou shalt see
+Not far from hence Antaeus, who both speaks
+And is unfetter’d, who shall place us there
+Where guilt is at its depth. Far onward stands
+Whom thou wouldst fain behold, in chains, and made
+Like to this spirit, save that in his looks
+More fell he seems.” By violent earthquake rock’d
+Ne’er shook a tow’r, so reeling to its base,
+As Ephialtes. More than ever then
+I dreaded death, nor than the terror more
+Had needed, if I had not seen the cords
+That held him fast. We, straightway journeying on,
+Came to Antaeus, who five ells complete
+Without the head, forth issued from the cave.
+
+“O thou, who in the fortunate vale, that made
+Great Scipio heir of glory, when his sword
+Drove back the troop of Hannibal in flight,
+Who thence of old didst carry for thy spoil
+An hundred lions; and if thou hadst fought
+In the high conflict on thy brethren’s side,
+Seems as men yet believ’d, that through thine arm
+The sons of earth had conquer’d, now vouchsafe
+To place us down beneath, where numbing cold
+Locks up Cocytus. Force not that we crave
+Or Tityus’ help or Typhon’s. Here is one
+Can give what in this realm ye covet. Stoop
+Therefore, nor scornfully distort thy lip.
+He in the upper world can yet bestow
+Renown on thee, for he doth live, and looks
+For life yet longer, if before the time
+Grace call him not unto herself.” Thus spake
+The teacher. He in haste forth stretch’d his hands,
+And caught my guide. Alcides whilom felt
+That grapple straighten’d score. Soon as my guide
+Had felt it, he bespake me thus: “This way
+That I may clasp thee;” then so caught me up,
+That we were both one burden. As appears
+The tower of Carisenda, from beneath
+Where it doth lean, if chance a passing cloud
+So sail across, that opposite it hangs,
+Such then Antaeus seem’d, as at mine ease
+I mark’d him stooping. I were fain at times
+T’ have pass’d another way. Yet in th’ abyss,
+That Lucifer with Judas low ingulfs,
+Lightly he plac’d us; nor there leaning stay’d,
+But rose as in a bark the stately mast.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXXII
+
+
+Could I command rough rhimes and hoarse, to suit
+That hole of sorrow, o’er which ev’ry rock
+His firm abutment rears, then might the vein
+Of fancy rise full springing: but not mine
+Such measures, and with falt’ring awe I touch
+The mighty theme; for to describe the depth
+Of all the universe, is no emprize
+To jest with, and demands a tongue not us’d
+To infant babbling. But let them assist
+My song, the tuneful maidens, by whose aid
+Amphion wall’d in Thebes, so with the truth
+My speech shall best accord. Oh ill-starr’d folk,
+Beyond all others wretched! who abide
+In such a mansion, as scarce thought finds words
+To speak of, better had ye here on earth
+Been flocks or mountain goats. As down we stood
+In the dark pit beneath the giants’ feet,
+But lower far than they, and I did gaze
+Still on the lofty battlement, a voice
+Bespoke me thus: “Look how thou walkest. Take
+Good heed, thy soles do tread not on the heads
+Of thy poor brethren.” Thereupon I turn’d,
+And saw before and underneath my feet
+A lake, whose frozen surface liker seem’d
+To glass than water. Not so thick a veil
+In winter e’er hath Austrian Danube spread
+O’er his still course, nor Tanais far remote
+Under the chilling sky. Roll’d o’er that mass
+Had Tabernich or Pietrapana fall’n,
+
+Not e’en its rim had creak’d. As peeps the frog
+Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams
+The village gleaner oft pursues her toil,
+So, to where modest shame appears, thus low
+Blue pinch’d and shrin’d in ice the spirits stood,
+Moving their teeth in shrill note like the stork.
+His face each downward held; their mouth the cold,
+Their eyes express’d the dolour of their heart.
+
+A space I look’d around, then at my feet
+Saw two so strictly join’d, that of their head
+The very hairs were mingled. “Tell me ye,
+Whose bosoms thus together press,” said I,
+“Who are ye?” At that sound their necks they bent,
+And when their looks were lifted up to me,
+Straightway their eyes, before all moist within,
+Distill’d upon their lips, and the frost bound
+The tears betwixt those orbs and held them there.
+Plank unto plank hath never cramp clos’d up
+So stoutly. Whence like two enraged goats
+They clash’d together; them such fury seiz’d.
+
+And one, from whom the cold both ears had reft,
+Exclaim’d, still looking downward: “Why on us
+Dost speculate so long? If thou wouldst know
+Who are these two, the valley, whence his wave
+Bisenzio slopes, did for its master own
+Their sire Alberto, and next him themselves.
+They from one body issued; and throughout
+Caina thou mayst search, nor find a shade
+More worthy in congealment to be fix’d,
+Not him, whose breast and shadow Arthur’s land
+At that one blow dissever’d, not Focaccia,
+No not this spirit, whose o’erjutting head
+Obstructs my onward view: he bore the name
+Of Mascheroni: Tuscan if thou be,
+Well knowest who he was: and to cut short
+All further question, in my form behold
+What once was Camiccione. I await
+Carlino here my kinsman, whose deep guilt
+Shall wash out mine.” A thousand visages
+Then mark’d I, which the keen and eager cold
+Had shap’d into a doggish grin; whence creeps
+A shiv’ring horror o’er me, at the thought
+Of those frore shallows. While we journey’d on
+Toward the middle, at whose point unites
+All heavy substance, and I trembling went
+Through that eternal chillness, I know not
+If will it were or destiny, or chance,
+But, passing ’midst the heads, my foot did strike
+With violent blow against the face of one.
+
+“Wherefore dost bruise me?” weeping, he exclaim’d,
+“Unless thy errand be some fresh revenge
+For Montaperto, wherefore troublest me?”
+
+I thus: “Instructor, now await me here,
+That I through him may rid me of my doubt.
+Thenceforth what haste thou wilt.” The teacher paus’d,
+And to that shade I spake, who bitterly
+Still curs’d me in his wrath. “What art thou, speak,
+That railest thus on others?” He replied:
+“Now who art thou, that smiting others’ cheeks
+Through Antenora roamest, with such force
+As were past suff’rance, wert thou living still?”
+
+“And I am living, to thy joy perchance,”
+Was my reply, “if fame be dear to thee,
+That with the rest I may thy name enrol.”
+
+“The contrary of what I covet most,”
+Said he, “thou tender’st: hence; nor vex me more.
+Ill knowest thou to flatter in this vale.”
+
+Then seizing on his hinder scalp, I cried:
+“Name thee, or not a hair shall tarry here.”
+
+“Rend all away,” he answer’d, “yet for that
+I will not tell nor show thee who I am,
+Though at my head thou pluck a thousand times.”
+
+Now I had grasp’d his tresses, and stript off
+More than one tuft, he barking, with his eyes
+Drawn in and downward, when another cried,
+“What ails thee, Bocca? Sound not loud enough
+Thy chatt’ring teeth, but thou must bark outright?
+What devil wrings thee?”—“Now,” said I, “be dumb,
+Accursed traitor! to thy shame of thee
+True tidings will I bear.”—“Off,” he replied,
+“Tell what thou list; but as thou escape from hence
+To speak of him whose tongue hath been so glib,
+Forget not: here he wails the Frenchman’s gold.
+‘Him of Duera,’ thou canst say, ‘I mark’d,
+Where the starv’d sinners pine.’ If thou be ask’d
+What other shade was with them, at thy side
+Is Beccaria, whose red gorge distain’d
+The biting axe of Florence. Farther on,
+If I misdeem not, Soldanieri bides,
+With Ganellon, and Tribaldello, him
+Who op’d Faenza when the people slept.”
+
+We now had left him, passing on our way,
+When I beheld two spirits by the ice
+Pent in one hollow, that the head of one
+Was cowl unto the other; and as bread
+Is raven’d up through hunger, th’ uppermost
+Did so apply his fangs to th’ other’s brain,
+Where the spine joins it. Not more furiously
+On Menalippus’ temples Tydeus gnaw’d,
+Than on that skull and on its garbage he.
+
+“O thou who show’st so beastly sign of hate
+’Gainst him thou prey’st on, let me hear,” said I
+“The cause, on such condition, that if right
+Warrant thy grievance, knowing who ye are,
+And what the colour of his sinning was,
+I may repay thee in the world above,
+If that, wherewith I speak be moist so long.”
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXXIII
+
+
+His jaws uplifting from their fell repast,
+That sinner wip’d them on the hairs o’ th’ head,
+Which he behind had mangled, then began:
+“Thy will obeying, I call up afresh
+Sorrow past cure, which but to think of wrings
+My heart, or ere I tell on’t. But if words,
+That I may utter, shall prove seed to bear
+Fruit of eternal infamy to him,
+The traitor whom I gnaw at, thou at once
+Shalt see me speak and weep. Who thou mayst be
+I know not, nor how here below art come:
+But Florentine thou seemest of a truth,
+When I do hear thee. Know I was on earth
+Count Ugolino, and th’ Archbishop he
+Ruggieri. Why I neighbour him so close,
+Now list. That through effect of his ill thoughts
+In him my trust reposing, I was ta’en
+And after murder’d, need is not I tell.
+What therefore thou canst not have heard, that is,
+How cruel was the murder, shalt thou hear,
+And know if he have wrong’d me. A small grate
+Within that mew, which for my sake the name
+Of famine bears, where others yet must pine,
+Already through its opening sev’ral moons
+Had shown me, when I slept the evil sleep,
+That from the future tore the curtain off.
+This one, methought, as master of the sport,
+Rode forth to chase the gaunt wolf and his whelps
+Unto the mountain, which forbids the sight
+Of Lucca to the Pisan. With lean brachs
+Inquisitive and keen, before him rang’d
+Lanfranchi with Sismondi and Gualandi.
+After short course the father and the sons
+Seem’d tir’d and lagging, and methought I saw
+The sharp tusks gore their sides. When I awoke
+Before the dawn, amid their sleep I heard
+My sons (for they were with me) weep and ask
+For bread. Right cruel art thou, if no pang
+Thou feel at thinking what my heart foretold;
+And if not now, why use thy tears to flow?
+Now had they waken’d; and the hour drew near
+When they were wont to bring us food; the mind
+Of each misgave him through his dream, and I
+Heard, at its outlet underneath lock’d up
+The’ horrible tower: whence uttering not a word
+I look’d upon the visage of my sons.
+I wept not: so all stone I felt within.
+They wept: and one, my little Anslem, cried:
+“Thou lookest so! Father what ails thee?” Yet
+I shed no tear, nor answer’d all that day
+Nor the next night, until another sun
+Came out upon the world. When a faint beam
+Had to our doleful prison made its way,
+And in four countenances I descry’d
+The image of my own, on either hand
+Through agony I bit, and they who thought
+I did it through desire of feeding, rose
+O’ th’ sudden, and cried, ‘Father, we should grieve
+Far less, if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gav’st
+These weeds of miserable flesh we wear,
+
+‘And do thou strip them off from us again.’
+Then, not to make them sadder, I kept down
+My spirit in stillness. That day and the next
+We all were silent. Ah, obdurate earth!
+Why open’dst not upon us? When we came
+To the fourth day, then Geddo at my feet
+Outstretch’d did fling him, crying, ‘Hast no help
+For me, my father!’ There he died, and e’en
+Plainly as thou seest me, saw I the three
+Fall one by one ’twixt the fifth day and sixth:
+
+“Whence I betook me now grown blind to grope
+Over them all, and for three days aloud
+Call’d on them who were dead. Then fasting got
+The mastery of grief.” Thus having spoke,
+
+Once more upon the wretched skull his teeth
+He fasten’d, like a mastiff’s ’gainst the bone
+Firm and unyielding. Oh thou Pisa! shame
+Of all the people, who their dwelling make
+In that fair region, where th’ Italian voice
+Is heard, since that thy neighbours are so slack
+To punish, from their deep foundations rise
+Capraia and Gorgona, and dam up
+The mouth of Arno, that each soul in thee
+May perish in the waters! What if fame
+Reported that thy castles were betray’d
+By Ugolino, yet no right hadst thou
+To stretch his children on the rack. For them,
+Brigata, Ugaccione, and the pair
+Of gentle ones, of whom my song hath told,
+Their tender years, thou modern Thebes! did make
+Uncapable of guilt. Onward we pass’d,
+Where others skarf’d in rugged folds of ice
+Not on their feet were turn’d, but each revers’d.
+
+There very weeping suffers not to weep;
+For at their eyes grief seeking passage finds
+Impediment, and rolling inward turns
+For increase of sharp anguish: the first tears
+Hang cluster’d, and like crystal vizors show,
+Under the socket brimming all the cup.
+
+Now though the cold had from my face dislodg’d
+Each feeling, as ’t were callous, yet me seem’d
+Some breath of wind I felt. “Whence cometh this,”
+Said I, “my master? Is not here below
+All vapour quench’d?”—“‘Thou shalt be speedily,”
+He answer’d, “where thine eye shall tell thee whence
+The cause descrying of this airy shower.”
+
+Then cried out one in the chill crust who mourn’d:
+“O souls so cruel! that the farthest post
+Hath been assign’d you, from this face remove
+The harden’d veil, that I may vent the grief
+Impregnate at my heart, some little space
+Ere it congeal again!” I thus replied:
+“Say who thou wast, if thou wouldst have mine aid;
+And if I extricate thee not, far down
+As to the lowest ice may I descend!”
+
+“The friar Alberigo,” answered he,
+“Am I, who from the evil garden pluck’d
+Its fruitage, and am here repaid, the date
+More luscious for my fig.”—“Hah!” I exclaim’d,
+“Art thou too dead!”—“How in the world aloft
+It fareth with my body,” answer’d he,
+“I am right ignorant. Such privilege
+Hath Ptolomea, that ofttimes the soul
+Drops hither, ere by Atropos divorc’d.
+And that thou mayst wipe out more willingly
+The glazed tear-drops that o’erlay mine eyes,
+Know that the soul, that moment she betrays,
+As I did, yields her body to a fiend
+Who after moves and governs it at will,
+Till all its time be rounded; headlong she
+Falls to this cistern. And perchance above
+Doth yet appear the body of a ghost,
+Who here behind me winters. Him thou know’st,
+If thou but newly art arriv’d below.
+The years are many that have pass’d away,
+Since to this fastness Branca Doria came.”
+
+“Now,” answer’d I, “methinks thou mockest me,
+For Branca Doria never yet hath died,
+But doth all natural functions of a man,
+Eats, drinks, and sleeps, and putteth raiment on.”
+
+He thus: “Not yet unto that upper foss
+By th’ evil talons guarded, where the pitch
+Tenacious boils, had Michael Zanche reach’d,
+When this one left a demon in his stead
+In his own body, and of one his kin,
+Who with him treachery wrought. But now put forth
+Thy hand, and ope mine eyes.” I op’d them not.
+Ill manners were best courtesy to him.
+
+Ah Genoese! men perverse in every way,
+With every foulness stain’d, why from the earth
+Are ye not cancel’d? Such an one of yours
+I with Romagna’s darkest spirit found,
+As for his doings even now in soul
+Is in Cocytus plung’d, and yet doth seem
+In body still alive upon the earth.
+
+
+
+
+CANTO XXXIV
+
+
+“The banners of Hell’s Monarch do come forth
+Towards us; therefore look,” so spake my guide,
+“If thou discern him.” As, when breathes a cloud
+Heavy and dense, or when the shades of night
+Fall on our hemisphere, seems view’d from far
+A windmill, which the blast stirs briskly round,
+Such was the fabric then methought I saw,
+
+To shield me from the wind, forthwith I drew
+Behind my guide: no covert else was there.
+
+Now came I (and with fear I bid my strain
+Record the marvel) where the souls were all
+Whelm’d underneath, transparent, as through glass
+Pellucid the frail stem. Some prone were laid,
+Others stood upright, this upon the soles,
+That on his head, a third with face to feet
+Arch’d like a bow. When to the point we came,
+Whereat my guide was pleas’d that I should see
+The creature eminent in beauty once,
+He from before me stepp’d and made me pause.
+
+“Lo!” he exclaim’d, “lo Dis! and lo the place,
+Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength.”
+
+How frozen and how faint I then became,
+Ask me not, reader! for I write it not,
+Since words would fail to tell thee of my state.
+I was not dead nor living. Think thyself
+If quick conception work in thee at all,
+How I did feel. That emperor, who sways
+The realm of sorrow, at mid breast from th’ ice
+Stood forth; and I in stature am more like
+A giant, than the giants are in his arms.
+Mark now how great that whole must be, which suits
+With such a part. If he were beautiful
+As he is hideous now, and yet did dare
+To scowl upon his Maker, well from him
+May all our mis’ry flow. Oh what a sight!
+How passing strange it seem’d, when I did spy
+Upon his head three faces: one in front
+Of hue vermilion, th’ other two with this
+Midway each shoulder join’d and at the crest;
+The right ’twixt wan and yellow seem’d: the left
+To look on, such as come from whence old Nile
+Stoops to the lowlands. Under each shot forth
+Two mighty wings, enormous as became
+A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw
+Outstretch’d on the wide sea. No plumes had they,
+But were in texture like a bat, and these
+He flapp’d i’ th’ air, that from him issued still
+Three winds, wherewith Cocytus to its depth
+Was frozen. At six eyes he wept: the tears
+Adown three chins distill’d with bloody foam.
+At every mouth his teeth a sinner champ’d
+Bruis’d as with pond’rous engine, so that three
+Were in this guise tormented. But far more
+Than from that gnawing, was the foremost pang’d
+By the fierce rending, whence ofttimes the back
+Was stript of all its skin. “That upper spirit,
+Who hath worse punishment,” so spake my guide,
+“Is Judas, he that hath his head within
+And plies the feet without. Of th’ other two,
+Whose heads are under, from the murky jaw
+Who hangs, is Brutus: lo! how he doth writhe
+And speaks not! Th’ other Cassius, that appears
+So large of limb. But night now re-ascends,
+And it is time for parting. All is seen.”
+
+I clipp’d him round the neck, for so he bade;
+And noting time and place, he, when the wings
+Enough were op’d, caught fast the shaggy sides,
+And down from pile to pile descending stepp’d
+Between the thick fell and the jagged ice.
+
+Soon as he reach’d the point, whereat the thigh
+Upon the swelling of the haunches turns,
+My leader there with pain and struggling hard
+Turn’d round his head, where his feet stood before,
+And grappled at the fell, as one who mounts,
+That into hell methought we turn’d again.
+
+“Expect that by such stairs as these,” thus spake
+The teacher, panting like a man forespent,
+“We must depart from evil so extreme.”
+Then at a rocky opening issued forth,
+And plac’d me on a brink to sit, next join’d
+With wary step my side. I rais’d mine eyes,
+Believing that I Lucifer should see
+Where he was lately left, but saw him now
+With legs held upward. Let the grosser sort,
+Who see not what the point was I had pass’d,
+Bethink them if sore toil oppress’d me then.
+
+“Arise,” my master cried, “upon thy feet.
+The way is long, and much uncouth the road;
+And now within one hour and half of noon
+The sun returns.” It was no palace-hall
+Lofty and luminous wherein we stood,
+But natural dungeon where ill footing was
+And scant supply of light. “Ere from th’ abyss
+I sep’rate,” thus when risen I began,
+“My guide! vouchsafe few words to set me free
+From error’s thralldom. Where is now the ice?
+How standeth he in posture thus revers’d?
+And how from eve to morn in space so brief
+Hath the sun made his transit?” He in few
+Thus answering spake: “Thou deemest thou art still
+On th’ other side the centre, where I grasp’d
+Th’ abhorred worm, that boreth through the world.
+Thou wast on th’ other side, so long as I
+Descended; when I turn’d, thou didst o’erpass
+That point, to which from ev’ry part is dragg’d
+All heavy substance. Thou art now arriv’d
+Under the hemisphere opposed to that,
+Which the great continent doth overspread,
+And underneath whose canopy expir’d
+The Man, that was born sinless, and so liv’d.
+Thy feet are planted on the smallest sphere,
+Whose other aspect is Judecca. Morn
+Here rises, when there evening sets: and he,
+Whose shaggy pile was scal’d, yet standeth fix’d,
+As at the first. On this part he fell down
+From heav’n; and th’ earth, here prominent before,
+Through fear of him did veil her with the sea,
+And to our hemisphere retir’d. Perchance
+To shun him was the vacant space left here
+By what of firm land on this side appears,
+That sprang aloof.” There is a place beneath,
+From Belzebub as distant, as extends
+The vaulted tomb, discover’d not by sight,
+But by the sound of brooklet, that descends
+This way along the hollow of a rock,
+Which, as it winds with no precipitous course,
+The wave hath eaten. By that hidden way
+My guide and I did enter, to return
+To the fair world: and heedless of repose
+We climbed, he first, I following his steps,
+Till on our view the beautiful lights of heav’n
+Dawn’d through a circular opening in the cave:
+Thus issuing we again beheld the stars.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1005 ***