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Produced by Dennis McCarthy | |
THE DIVINE COMEDY | |
OF DANTE ALIGHIERI | |
(1265-1321) | |
TRANSLATED BY | |
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW | |
(1807-1882) | |
CANTICLE I: INFERNO | |
CREDITS | |
The base text for this edition has been provided by Digital Dante, a | |
project sponsored by Columbia University's Institute for Learning | |
Technologies. Specific thanks goes to Jennifer Hogan (Project | |
Editor/Director), Tanya Larkin (Assistant to Editor), Robert W. Cole | |
(Proofreader/Assistant Editor), and Jennifer Cook (Proofreader). | |
The Digital Dante Project is a digital 'study space' for Dante studies and | |
scholarship. The project is multi-faceted and fluid by nature of the Web. | |
Digital Dante attempts to organize the information most significant for | |
students first engaging with Dante and scholars researching Dante. The | |
digital of Digital Dante incurs a new challenge to the student, the | |
scholar, and teacher, perusing the Web: to become proficient in the new | |
tools, e.g., Search, the Discussion Group, well enough to look beyond the | |
technology and delve into the content. For more information and access to | |
the project, please visit its web site at: | |
http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/projects/dante/ | |
For this Project Gutenberg edition the e-text was rechecked. The editor | |
greatly thanks Dian McCarthy for her assistance in proofreading the | |
Paradiso. Also deserving praise are Herbert Fann for programming the text | |
editor "Desktop Tools/Edit" and the late August Dvorak for designing his | |
keyboard layout. Please refer to Project Gutenberg's e-text listings for | |
other editions or translations of 'The Divine Comedy.' For this three part | |
edition of 'The Divine Comedy' please refer to the end of the Paradiso for | |
supplemental materials. | |
Dennis McCarthy, July 1997 | |
imprimatur@juno.com | |
CONTENTS | |
Inferno | |
I. The Dark Forest. The Hill of Difficulty. The Panther, | |
the Lion, and the Wolf. Virgil. | |
II. The Descent. Dante's Protest and Virgil's Appeal. | |
The Intercession of the Three Ladies Benedight. | |
III. The Gate of Hell. The Inefficient or Indifferent. | |
Pope Celestine V. The Shores of Acheron. Charon. | |
The Earthquake and the Swoon. | |
IV. The First Circle, Limbo: Virtuous Pagans and the Unbaptized. | |
The Four Poets, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. The Noble | |
Castle of Philosophy. | |
V. The Second Circle: The Wanton. Minos. The Infernal Hurricane. | |
Francesca da Rimini. | |
VI. The Third Circle: The Gluttonous. Cerberus. The Eternal Rain. | |
Ciacco. Florence. | |
VII. The Fourth Circle: The Avaricious and the Prodigal. | |
Plutus. Fortune and her Wheel. The Fifth Circle: | |
The Irascible and the Sullen. Styx. | |
VIII. Phlegyas. Philippo Argenti. The Gate of the City of Dis. | |
IX. The Furies and Medusa. The Angel. The City of Dis. | |
The Sixth Circle: Heresiarchs. | |
X. Farinata and Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti. Discourse on the | |
Knowledge of the Damned. | |
XI. The Broken Rocks. Pope Anastasius. General Description of | |
the Inferno and its Divisions. | |
XII. The Minotaur. The Seventh Circle: The Violent. | |
The River Phlegethon. The Violent against their Neighbours. | |
The Centaurs. Tyrants. | |
XIII. The Wood of Thorns. The Harpies. The Violent | |
against themselves. Suicides. Pier della Vigna. | |
Lano and Jacopo da Sant' Andrea. | |
XIV. The Sand Waste and the Rain of Fire. The Violent against God. | |
Capaneus. The Statue of Time, and the Four Infernal Rivers. | |
XV. The Violent against Nature. Brunetto Latini. | |
XVI. Guidoguerra, Aldobrandi, and Rusticucci. Cataract of | |
the River of Blood. | |
XVII. Geryon. The Violent against Art. Usurers. Descent into | |
the Abyss of Malebolge. | |
XVIII. The Eighth Circle, Malebolge: The Fraudulent and | |
the Malicious. The First Bolgia: Seducers and Panders. | |
Venedico Caccianimico. Jason. The Second Bolgia: | |
Flatterers. Allessio Interminelli. Thais. | |
XIX. The Third Bolgia: Simoniacs. Pope Nicholas III. | |
Dante's Reproof of corrupt Prelates. | |
XX. The Fourth Bolgia: Soothsayers. Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, | |
Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. | |
Virgil reproaches Dante's Pity. Mantua's Foundation. | |
XXI. The Fifth Bolgia: Peculators. The Elder of Santa Zita. | |
Malacoda and other Devils. | |
XXII. Ciampolo, Friar Gomita, and Michael Zanche. | |
The Malabranche quarrel. | |
XXIII. Escape from the Malabranche. The Sixth Bolgia: Hypocrites. | |
Catalano and Loderingo. Caiaphas. | |
XXIV. The Seventh Bolgia: Thieves. Vanni Fucci. Serpents. | |
XXV. Vanni Fucci's Punishment. Agnello Brunelleschi, | |
Buoso degli Abati, Puccio Sciancato, Cianfa de' Donati, | |
and Guercio Cavalcanti. | |
XXVI. The Eighth Bolgia: Evil Counsellors. Ulysses and Diomed. | |
Ulysses' Last Voyage. | |
XXVII. Guido da Montefeltro. His deception by Pope Boniface VIII. | |
XXVIII. The Ninth Bolgia: Schismatics. Mahomet and Ali. | |
Pier da Medicina, Curio, Mosca, and Bertrand de Born. | |
XXIX. Geri del Bello. The Tenth Bolgia: Alchemists. | |
Griffolino d' Arezzo and Capocchino. | |
XXX. Other Falsifiers or Forgers. Gianni Schicchi, Myrrha, | |
Adam of Brescia, Potiphar's Wife, and Sinon of Troy. | |
XXXI. The Giants, Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antaeus. | |
Descent to Cocytus. | |
XXXII. The Ninth Circle: Traitors. The Frozen Lake of Cocytus. | |
First Division, Caina: Traitors to their Kindred. | |
Camicion de' Pazzi. Second Division, Antenora: | |
Traitors to their Country. Dante questions | |
Bocca degli Abati. Buoso da Duera. | |
XXXIII. Count Ugolino and the Archbishop Ruggieri. The Death | |
of Count Ugolino's Sons. Third Division of the Ninth Circle, | |
Ptolomaea: Traitors to their Friends. Friar Alberigo, | |
Branco d' Oria. | |
XXXIV. Fourth Division of the Ninth Circle, the Judecca: | |
Traitors to their Lords and Benefactors. Lucifer, | |
Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. The Chasm of Lethe. | |
The Ascent. | |
Incipit Comoedia Dantis Alagherii, | |
Florentini natione, non moribus. | |
The Divine Comedy | |
translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | |
(e-text courtesy ILT's Digital Dante Project) | |
INFERNO | |
Inferno: Canto I | |
Midway upon the journey of our life | |
I found myself within a forest dark, | |
For the straightforward pathway had been lost. | |
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say | |
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, | |
Which in the very thought renews the fear. | |
So bitter is it, death is little more; | |
But of the good to treat, which there I found, | |
Speak will I of the other things I saw there. | |
I cannot well repeat how there I entered, | |
So full was I of slumber at the moment | |
In which I had abandoned the true way. | |
But after I had reached a mountain's foot, | |
At that point where the valley terminated, | |
Which had with consternation pierced my heart, | |
Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders, | |
Vested already with that planet's rays | |
Which leadeth others right by every road. | |
Then was the fear a little quieted | |
That in my heart's lake had endured throughout | |
The night, which I had passed so piteously. | |
And even as he, who, with distressful breath, | |
Forth issued from the sea upon the shore, | |
Turns to the water perilous and gazes; | |
So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward, | |
Turn itself back to re-behold the pass | |
Which never yet a living person left. | |
After my weary body I had rested, | |
The way resumed I on the desert <DW72>, | |
So that the firm foot ever was the lower. | |
And lo! almost where the ascent began, | |
A panther light and swift exceedingly, | |
Which with a spotted skin was covered o'er! | |
And never moved she from before my face, | |
Nay, rather did impede so much my way, | |
That many times I to return had turned. | |
The time was the beginning of the morning, | |
And up the sun was mounting with those stars | |
That with him were, what time the Love Divine | |
At first in motion set those beauteous things; | |
So were to me occasion of good hope, | |
The variegated skin of that wild beast, | |
The hour of time, and the delicious season; | |
But not so much, that did not give me fear | |
A lion's aspect which appeared to me. | |
He seemed as if against me he were coming | |
With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger, | |
So that it seemed the air was afraid of him; | |
And a she-wolf, that with all hungerings | |
Seemed to be laden in her meagreness, | |
And many folk has caused to live forlorn! | |
She brought upon me so much heaviness, | |
With the affright that from her aspect came, | |
That I the hope relinquished of the height. | |
And as he is who willingly acquires, | |
And the time comes that causes him to lose, | |
Who weeps in all his thoughts and is despondent, | |
E'en such made me that beast withouten peace, | |
Which, coming on against me by degrees | |
Thrust me back thither where the sun is silent. | |
While I was rushing downward to the lowland, | |
Before mine eyes did one present himself, | |
Who seemed from long-continued silence hoarse. | |
When I beheld him in the desert vast, | |
"Have pity on me," unto him I cried, | |
"Whiche'er thou art, or shade or real man!" | |
He answered me: "Not man; man once I was, | |
And both my parents were of Lombardy, | |
And Mantuans by country both of them. | |
'Sub Julio' was I born, though it was late, | |
And lived at Rome under the good Augustus, | |
During the time of false and lying gods. | |
A poet was I, and I sang that just | |
Son of Anchises, who came forth from Troy, | |
After that Ilion the superb was burned. | |
But thou, why goest thou back to such annoyance? | |
Why climb'st thou not the Mount Delectable, | |
Which is the source and cause of every joy?" | |
"Now, art thou that Virgilius and that fountain | |
Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech?" | |
I made response to him with bashful forehead. | |
"O, of the other poets honour and light, | |
Avail me the long study and great love | |
That have impelled me to explore thy volume! | |
Thou art my master, and my author thou, | |
Thou art alone the one from whom I took | |
The beautiful style that has done honour to me. | |
Behold the beast, for which I have turned back; | |
Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage, | |
For she doth make my veins and pulses tremble." | |
"Thee it behoves to take another road," | |
Responded he, when he beheld me weeping, | |
"If from this savage place thou wouldst escape; | |
Because this beast, at which thou criest out, | |
Suffers not any one to pass her way, | |
But so doth harass him, that she destroys him; | |
And has a nature so malign and ruthless, | |
That never doth she glut her greedy will, | |
And after food is hungrier than before. | |
Many the animals with whom she weds, | |
And more they shall be still, until the Greyhound | |
Comes, who shall make her perish in her pain. | |
He shall not feed on either earth or pelf, | |
But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue; | |
'Twixt Feltro and Feltro shall his nation be; | |
Of that low Italy shall he be the saviour, | |
On whose account the maid Camilla died, | |
Euryalus, Turnus, Nisus, of their wounds; | |
Through every city shall he hunt her down, | |
Until he shall have driven her back to Hell, | |
There from whence envy first did let her loose. | |
Therefore I think and judge it for thy best | |
Thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, | |
And lead thee hence through the eternal place, | |
Where thou shalt hear the desperate lamentations, | |
Shalt see the ancient spirits disconsolate, | |
Who cry out each one for the second death; | |
And thou shalt see those who contented are | |
Within the fire, because they hope to come, | |
Whene'er it may be, to the blessed people; | |
To whom, then, if thou wishest to ascend, | |
A soul shall be for that than I more worthy; | |
With her at my departure I will leave thee; | |
Because that Emperor, who reigns above, | |
In that I was rebellious to his law, | |
Wills that through me none come into his city. | |
He governs everywhere, and there he reigns; | |
There is his city and his lofty throne; | |
O happy he whom thereto he elects!" | |
And I to him: "Poet, I thee entreat, | |
By that same God whom thou didst never know, | |
So that I may escape this woe and worse, | |
Thou wouldst conduct me there where thou hast said, | |
That I may see the portal of Saint Peter, | |
And those thou makest so disconsolate." | |
Then he moved on, and I behind him followed. | |
Inferno: Canto II | |
Day was departing, and the embrowned air | |
Released the animals that are on earth | |
From their fatigues; and I the only one | |
Made myself ready to sustain the war, | |
Both of the way and likewise of the woe, | |
Which memory that errs not shall retrace. | |
O Muses, O high genius, now assist me! | |
O memory, that didst write down what I saw, | |
Here thy nobility shall be manifest! | |
And I began: "Poet, who guidest me, | |
Regard my manhood, if it be sufficient, | |
Ere to the arduous pass thou dost confide me. | |
Thou sayest, that of Silvius the parent, | |
While yet corruptible, unto the world | |
Immortal went, and was there bodily. | |
But if the adversary of all evil | |
Was courteous, thinking of the high effect | |
That issue would from him, and who, and what, | |
To men of intellect unmeet it seems not; | |
For he was of great Rome, and of her empire | |
In the empyreal heaven as father chosen; | |
The which and what, wishing to speak the truth, | |
Were stablished as the holy place, wherein | |
Sits the successor of the greatest Peter. | |
Upon this journey, whence thou givest him vaunt, | |
Things did he hear, which the occasion were | |
Both of his victory and the papal mantle. | |
Thither went afterwards the Chosen Vessel, | |
To bring back comfort thence unto that Faith, | |
Which of salvation's way is the beginning. | |
But I, why thither come, or who concedes it? | |
I not Aeneas am, I am not Paul, | |
Nor I, nor others, think me worthy of it. | |
Therefore, if I resign myself to come, | |
I fear the coming may be ill-advised; | |
Thou'rt wise, and knowest better than I speak." | |
And as he is, who unwills what he willed, | |
And by new thoughts doth his intention change, | |
So that from his design he quite withdraws, | |
Such I became, upon that dark hillside, | |
Because, in thinking, I consumed the emprise, | |
Which was so very prompt in the beginning. | |
"If I have well thy language understood," | |
Replied that shade of the Magnanimous, | |
"Thy soul attainted is with cowardice, | |
Which many times a man encumbers so, | |
It turns him back from honoured enterprise, | |
As false sight doth a beast, when he is shy. | |
That thou mayst free thee from this apprehension, | |
I'll tell thee why I came, and what I heard | |
At the first moment when I grieved for thee. | |
Among those was I who are in suspense, | |
And a fair, saintly Lady called to me | |
In such wise, I besought her to command me. | |
Her eyes where shining brighter than the Star; | |
And she began to say, gentle and low, | |
With voice angelical, in her own language: | |
'O spirit courteous of Mantua, | |
Of whom the fame still in the world endures, | |
And shall endure, long-lasting as the world; | |
A friend of mine, and not the friend of fortune, | |
Upon the desert <DW72> is so impeded | |
Upon his way, that he has turned through terror, | |
And may, I fear, already be so lost, | |
That I too late have risen to his succour, | |
From that which I have heard of him in Heaven. | |
Bestir thee now, and with thy speech ornate, | |
And with what needful is for his release, | |
Assist him so, that I may be consoled. | |
Beatrice am I, who do bid thee go; | |
I come from there, where I would fain return; | |
Love moved me, which compelleth me to speak. | |
When I shall be in presence of my Lord, | |
Full often will I praise thee unto him.' | |
Then paused she, and thereafter I began: | |
'O Lady of virtue, thou alone through whom | |
The human race exceedeth all contained | |
Within the heaven that has the lesser circles, | |
So grateful unto me is thy commandment, | |
To obey, if 'twere already done, were late; | |
No farther need'st thou ope to me thy wish. | |
But the cause tell me why thou dost not shun | |
The here descending down into this centre, | |
From the vast place thou burnest to return to.' | |
'Since thou wouldst fain so inwardly discern, | |
Briefly will I relate,' she answered me, | |
'Why I am not afraid to enter here. | |
Of those things only should one be afraid | |
Which have the power of doing others harm; | |
Of the rest, no; because they are not fearful. | |
God in his mercy such created me | |
That misery of yours attains me not, | |
Nor any flame assails me of this burning. | |
A gentle Lady is in Heaven, who grieves | |
At this impediment, to which I send thee, | |
So that stern judgment there above is broken. | |
In her entreaty she besought Lucia, | |
And said, "Thy faithful one now stands in need | |
Of thee, and unto thee I recommend him." | |
Lucia, foe of all that cruel is, | |
Hastened away, and came unto the place | |
Where I was sitting with the ancient Rachel. | |
"Beatrice" said she, "the true praise of God, | |
Why succourest thou not him, who loved thee so, | |
For thee he issued from the vulgar herd? | |
Dost thou not hear the pity of his plaint? | |
Dost thou not see the death that combats him | |
Beside that flood, where ocean has no vaunt?" | |
Never were persons in the world so swift | |
To work their weal and to escape their woe, | |
As I, after such words as these were uttered, | |
Came hither downward from my blessed seat, | |
Confiding in thy dignified discourse, | |
Which honours thee, and those who've listened to it.' | |
After she thus had spoken unto me, | |
Weeping, her shining eyes she turned away; | |
Whereby she made me swifter in my coming; | |
And unto thee I came, as she desired; | |
I have delivered thee from that wild beast, | |
Which barred the beautiful mountain's short ascent. | |
What is it, then? Why, why dost thou delay? | |
Why is such baseness bedded in thy heart? | |
Daring and hardihood why hast thou not, | |
Seeing that three such Ladies benedight | |
Are caring for thee in the court of Heaven, | |
And so much good my speech doth promise thee?" | |
Even as the flowerets, by nocturnal chill, | |
Bowed down and closed, when the sun whitens them, | |
Uplift themselves all open on their stems; | |
Such I became with my exhausted strength, | |
And such good courage to my heart there coursed, | |
That I began, like an intrepid person: | |
"O she compassionate, who succoured me, | |
And courteous thou, who hast obeyed so soon | |
The words of truth which she addressed to thee! | |
Thou hast my heart so with desire disposed | |
To the adventure, with these words of thine, | |
That to my first intent I have returned. | |
Now go, for one sole will is in us both, | |
Thou Leader, and thou Lord, and Master thou." | |
Thus said I to him; and when he had moved, | |
I entered on the deep and savage way. | |
Inferno: Canto III | |
"Through me the way is to the city dolent; | |
Through me the way is to eternal dole; | |
Through me the way among the people lost. | |
Justice incited my sublime Creator; | |
Created me divine Omnipotence, | |
The highest Wisdom and the primal Love. | |
Before me there were no created things, | |
Only eterne, and I eternal last. | |
All hope abandon, ye who enter in!" | |
These words in sombre colour I beheld | |
Written upon the summit of a gate; | |
Whence I: "Their sense is, Master, hard to me!" | |
And he to me, as one experienced: | |
"Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned, | |
All cowardice must needs be here extinct. | |
We to the place have come, where I have told thee | |
Thou shalt behold the people dolorous | |
Who have foregone the good of intellect." | |
And after he had laid his hand on mine | |
With joyful mien, whence I was comforted, | |
He led me in among the secret things. | |
There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud | |
Resounded through the air without a star, | |
Whence I, at the beginning, wept thereat. | |
Languages diverse, horrible dialects, | |
Accents of anger, words of agony, | |
And voices high and hoarse, with sound of hands, | |
Made up a tumult that goes whirling on | |
For ever in that air for ever black, | |
Even as the sand doth, when the whirlwind breathes. | |
And I, who had my head with horror bound, | |
Said: "Master, what is this which now I hear? | |
What folk is this, which seems by pain so vanquished?" | |
And he to me: "This miserable mode | |
Maintain the melancholy souls of those | |
Who lived withouten infamy or praise. | |
Commingled are they with that caitiff choir | |
Of Angels, who have not rebellious been, | |
Nor faithful were to God, but were for self. | |
The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair; | |
Nor them the nethermore abyss receives, | |
For glory none the damned would have from them." | |
And I: "O Master, what so grievous is | |
To these, that maketh them lament so sore?" | |
He answered: "I will tell thee very briefly. | |
These have no longer any hope of death; | |
And this blind life of theirs is so debased, | |
They envious are of every other fate. | |
No fame of them the world permits to be; | |
Misericord and Justice both disdain them. | |
Let us not speak of them, but look, and pass." | |
And I, who looked again, beheld a banner, | |
Which, whirling round, ran on so rapidly, | |
That of all pause it seemed to me indignant; | |
And after it there came so long a train | |
Of people, that I ne'er would have believed | |
That ever Death so many had undone. | |
When some among them I had recognised, | |
I looked, and I beheld the shade of him | |
Who made through cowardice the great refusal. | |
Forthwith I comprehended, and was certain, | |
That this the sect was of the caitiff wretches | |
Hateful to God and to his enemies. | |
These miscreants, who never were alive, | |
Were naked, and were stung exceedingly | |
By gadflies and by hornets that were there. | |
These did their faces irrigate with blood, | |
Which, with their tears commingled, at their feet | |
By the disgusting worms was gathered up. | |
And when to gazing farther I betook me. | |
People I saw on a great river's bank; | |
Whence said I: "Master, now vouchsafe to me, | |
That I may know who these are, and what law | |
Makes them appear so ready to pass over, | |
As I discern athwart the dusky light." | |
And he to me: "These things shall all be known | |
To thee, as soon as we our footsteps stay | |
Upon the dismal shore of Acheron." | |
Then with mine eyes ashamed and downward cast, | |
Fearing my words might irksome be to him, | |
From speech refrained I till we reached the river. | |
And lo! towards us coming in a boat | |
An old man, hoary with the hair of eld, | |
Crying: "Woe unto you, ye souls depraved! | |
Hope nevermore to look upon the heavens; | |
I come to lead you to the other shore, | |
To the eternal shades in heat and frost. | |
And thou, that yonder standest, living soul, | |
Withdraw thee from these people, who are dead!" | |
But when he saw that I did not withdraw, | |
He said: "By other ways, by other ports | |
Thou to the shore shalt come, not here, for passage; | |
A lighter vessel needs must carry thee." | |
And unto him the Guide: "Vex thee not, Charon; | |
It is so willed there where is power to do | |
That which is willed; and farther question not." | |
Thereat were quieted the fleecy cheeks | |
Of him the ferryman of the livid fen, | |
Who round about his eyes had wheels of flame. | |
But all those souls who weary were and naked | |
Their colour changed and gnashed their teeth together, | |
As soon as they had heard those cruel words. | |
God they blasphemed and their progenitors, | |
The human race, the place, the time, the seed | |
Of their engendering and of their birth! | |
Thereafter all together they drew back, | |
Bitterly weeping, to the accursed shore, | |
Which waiteth every man who fears not God. | |
Charon the demon, with the eyes of glede, | |
Beckoning to them, collects them all together, | |
Beats with his oar whoever lags behind. | |
As in the autumn-time the leaves fall off, | |
First one and then another, till the branch | |
Unto the earth surrenders all its spoils; | |
In similar wise the evil seed of Adam | |
Throw themselves from that margin one by one, | |
At signals, as a bird unto its lure. | |
So they depart across the dusky wave, | |
And ere upon the other side they land, | |
Again on this side a new troop assembles. | |
"My son," the courteous Master said to me, | |
"All those who perish in the wrath of God | |
Here meet together out of every land; | |
And ready are they to pass o'er the river, | |
Because celestial Justice spurs them on, | |
So that their fear is turned into desire. | |
This way there never passes a good soul; | |
And hence if Charon doth complain of thee, | |
Well mayst thou know now what his speech imports." | |
This being finished, all the dusk champaign | |
Trembled so violently, that of that terror | |
The recollection bathes me still with sweat. | |
The land of tears gave forth a blast of wind, | |
And fulminated a vermilion light, | |
Which overmastered in me every sense, | |
And as a man whom sleep hath seized I fell. | |
Inferno: Canto IV | |
Broke the deep lethargy within my head | |
A heavy thunder, so that I upstarted, | |
Like to a person who by force is wakened; | |
And round about I moved my rested eyes, | |
Uprisen erect, and steadfastly I gazed, | |
To recognise the place wherein I was. | |
True is it, that upon the verge I found me | |
Of the abysmal valley dolorous, | |
That gathers thunder of infinite ululations. | |
Obscure, profound it was, and nebulous, | |
So that by fixing on its depths my sight | |
Nothing whatever I discerned therein. | |
"Let us descend now into the blind world," | |
Began the Poet, pallid utterly; | |
"I will be first, and thou shalt second be." | |
And I, who of his colour was aware, | |
Said: "How shall I come, if thou art afraid, | |
Who'rt wont to be a comfort to my fears?" | |
And he to me: "The anguish of the people | |
Who are below here in my face depicts | |
That pity which for terror thou hast taken. | |
Let us go on, for the long way impels us." | |
Thus he went in, and thus he made me enter | |
The foremost circle that surrounds the abyss. | |
There, as it seemed to me from listening, | |
Were lamentations none, but only sighs, | |
That tremble made the everlasting air. | |
And this arose from sorrow without torment, | |
Which the crowds had, that many were and great, | |
Of infants and of women and of men. | |
To me the Master good: "Thou dost not ask | |
What spirits these, which thou beholdest, are? | |
Now will I have thee know, ere thou go farther, | |
That they sinned not; and if they merit had, | |
'Tis not enough, because they had not baptism | |
Which is the portal of the Faith thou holdest; | |
And if they were before Christianity, | |
In the right manner they adored not God; | |
And among such as these am I myself. | |
For such defects, and not for other guilt, | |
Lost are we and are only so far punished, | |
That without hope we live on in desire." | |
Great grief seized on my heart when this I heard, | |
Because some people of much worthiness | |
I knew, who in that Limbo were suspended. | |
"Tell me, my Master, tell me, thou my Lord," | |
Began I, with desire of being certain | |
Of that Faith which o'ercometh every error, | |
"Came any one by his own merit hence, | |
Or by another's, who was blessed thereafter?" | |
And he, who understood my covert speech, | |
Replied: "I was a novice in this state, | |
When I saw hither come a Mighty One, | |
With sign of victory incoronate. | |
Hence he drew forth the shade of the First Parent, | |
And that of his son Abel, and of Noah, | |
Of Moses the lawgiver, and the obedient | |
Abraham, patriarch, and David, king, | |
Israel with his father and his children, | |
And Rachel, for whose sake he did so much, | |
And others many, and he made them blessed; | |
And thou must know, that earlier than these | |
Never were any human spirits saved." | |
We ceased not to advance because he spake, | |
But still were passing onward through the forest, | |
The forest, say I, of thick-crowded ghosts. | |
Not very far as yet our way had gone | |
This side the summit, when I saw a fire | |
That overcame a hemisphere of darkness. | |
We were a little distant from it still, | |
But not so far that I in part discerned not | |
That honourable people held that place. | |
"O thou who honourest every art and science, | |
Who may these be, which such great honour have, | |
That from the fashion of the rest it parts them?" | |
And he to me: "The honourable name, | |
That sounds of them above there in thy life, | |
Wins grace in Heaven, that so advances them." | |
In the mean time a voice was heard by me: | |
"All honour be to the pre-eminent Poet; | |
His shade returns again, that was departed." | |
After the voice had ceased and quiet was, | |
Four mighty shades I saw approaching us; | |
Semblance had they nor sorrowful nor glad. | |
To say to me began my gracious Master: | |
"Him with that falchion in his hand behold, | |
Who comes before the three, even as their lord. | |
That one is Homer, Poet sovereign; | |
He who comes next is Horace, the satirist; | |
The third is Ovid, and the last is Lucan. | |
Because to each of these with me applies | |
The name that solitary voice proclaimed, | |
They do me honour, and in that do well." | |
Thus I beheld assemble the fair school | |
Of that lord of the song pre-eminent, | |
Who o'er the others like an eagle soars. | |
When they together had discoursed somewhat, | |
They turned to me with signs of salutation, | |
And on beholding this, my Master smiled; | |
And more of honour still, much more, they did me, | |
In that they made me one of their own band; | |
So that the sixth was I, 'mid so much wit. | |
Thus we went on as far as to the light, | |
Things saying 'tis becoming to keep silent, | |
As was the saying of them where I was. | |
We came unto a noble castle's foot, | |
Seven times encompassed with lofty walls, | |
Defended round by a fair rivulet; | |
This we passed over even as firm ground; | |
Through portals seven I entered with these Sages; | |
We came into a meadow of fresh verdure. | |
People were there with solemn eyes and slow, | |
Of great authority in their countenance; | |
They spake but seldom, and with gentle voices. | |
Thus we withdrew ourselves upon one side | |
Into an opening luminous and lofty, | |
So that they all of them were visible. | |
There opposite, upon the green enamel, | |
Were pointed out to me the mighty spirits, | |
Whom to have seen I feel myself exalted. | |
I saw Electra with companions many, | |
'Mongst whom I knew both Hector and Aeneas, | |
Caesar in armour with gerfalcon eyes; | |
I saw Camilla and Penthesilea | |
On the other side, and saw the King Latinus, | |
Who with Lavinia his daughter sat; | |
I saw that Brutus who drove Tarquin forth, | |
Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia, | |
And saw alone, apart, the Saladin. | |
When I had lifted up my brows a little, | |
The Master I beheld of those who know, | |
Sit with his philosophic family. | |
All gaze upon him, and all do him honour. | |
There I beheld both Socrates and Plato, | |
Who nearer him before the others stand; | |
Democritus, who puts the world on chance, | |
Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales, | |
Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus; | |
Of qualities I saw the good collector, | |
Hight Dioscorides; and Orpheus saw I, | |
Tully and Livy, and moral Seneca, | |
Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy, | |
Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna, | |
Averroes, who the great Comment made. | |
I cannot all of them pourtray in full, | |
Because so drives me onward the long theme, | |
That many times the word comes short of fact. | |
The sixfold company in two divides; | |
Another way my sapient Guide conducts me | |
Forth from the quiet to the air that trembles; | |
And to a place I come where nothing shines. | |
Inferno: Canto V | |
Thus I descended out of the first circle | |
Down to the second, that less space begirds, | |
And so much greater dole, that goads to wailing. | |
There standeth Minos horribly, and snarls; | |
Examines the transgressions at the entrance; | |
Judges, and sends according as he girds him. | |
I say, that when the spirit evil-born | |
Cometh before him, wholly it confesses; | |
And this discriminator of transgressions | |
Seeth what place in Hell is meet for it; | |
Girds himself with his tail as many times | |
As grades he wishes it should be thrust down. | |
Always before him many of them stand; | |
They go by turns each one unto the judgment; | |
They speak, and hear, and then are downward hurled. | |
"O thou, that to this dolorous hostelry | |
Comest," said Minos to me, when he saw me, | |
Leaving the practice of so great an office, | |
"Look how thou enterest, and in whom thou trustest; | |
Let not the portal's amplitude deceive thee." | |
And unto him my Guide: "Why criest thou too? | |
Do not impede his journey fate-ordained; | |
It is so willed there where is power to do | |
That which is willed; and ask no further question." | |
And now begin the dolesome notes to grow | |
Audible unto me; now am I come | |
There where much lamentation strikes upon me. | |
I came into a place mute of all light, | |
Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest, | |
If by opposing winds 't is combated. | |
The infernal hurricane that never rests | |
Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine; | |
Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. | |
When they arrive before the precipice, | |
There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments, | |
There they blaspheme the puissance divine. | |
I understood that unto such a torment | |
The carnal malefactors were condemned, | |
Who reason subjugate to appetite. | |
And as the wings of starlings bear them on | |
In the cold season in large band and full, | |
So doth that blast the spirits maledict; | |
It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them; | |
No hope doth comfort them for evermore, | |
Not of repose, but even of lesser pain. | |
And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays, | |
Making in air a long line of themselves, | |
So saw I coming, uttering lamentations, | |
Shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress. | |
Whereupon said I: "Master, who are those | |
People, whom the black air so castigates?" | |
"The first of those, of whom intelligence | |
Thou fain wouldst have," then said he unto me, | |
"The empress was of many languages. | |
To sensual vices she was so abandoned, | |
That lustful she made licit in her law, | |
To remove the blame to which she had been led. | |
She is Semiramis, of whom we read | |
That she succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse; | |
She held the land which now the Sultan rules. | |
The next is she who killed herself for love, | |
And broke faith with the ashes of Sichaeus; | |
Then Cleopatra the voluptuous." | |
Helen I saw, for whom so many ruthless | |
Seasons revolved; and saw the great Achilles, | |
Who at the last hour combated with Love. | |
Paris I saw, Tristan; and more than a thousand | |
Shades did he name and point out with his finger, | |
Whom Love had separated from our life. | |
After that I had listened to my Teacher, | |
Naming the dames of eld and cavaliers, | |
Pity prevailed, and I was nigh bewildered. | |
And I began: "O Poet, willingly | |
Speak would I to those two, who go together, | |
And seem upon the wind to be so light." | |
And, he to me: "Thou'lt mark, when they shall be | |
Nearer to us; and then do thou implore them | |
By love which leadeth them, and they will come." | |
Soon as the wind in our direction sways them, | |
My voice uplift I: "O ye weary souls! | |
Come speak to us, if no one interdicts it." | |
As turtle-doves, called onward by desire, | |
With open and steady wings to the sweet nest | |
Fly through the air by their volition borne, | |
So came they from the band where Dido is, | |
Approaching us athwart the air malign, | |
So strong was the affectionate appeal. | |
"O living creature gracious and benignant, | |
Who visiting goest through the purple air | |
Us, who have stained the world incarnadine, | |
If were the King of the Universe our friend, | |
We would pray unto him to give thee peace, | |
Since thou hast pity on our woe perverse. | |
Of what it pleases thee to hear and speak, | |
That will we hear, and we will speak to you, | |
While silent is the wind, as it is now. | |
Sitteth the city, wherein I was born, | |
Upon the sea-shore where the Po descends | |
To rest in peace with all his retinue. | |
Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize, | |
Seized this man for the person beautiful | |
That was ta'en from me, and still the mode offends me. | |
Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, | |
Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, | |
That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me; | |
Love has conducted us unto one death; | |
Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!" | |
These words were borne along from them to us. | |
As soon as I had heard those souls tormented, | |
I bowed my face, and so long held it down | |
Until the Poet said to me: "What thinkest?" | |
When I made answer, I began: "Alas! | |
How many pleasant thoughts, how much desire, | |
Conducted these unto the dolorous pass!" | |
Then unto them I turned me, and I spake, | |
And I began: "Thine agonies, Francesca, | |
Sad and compassionate to weeping make me. | |
But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs, | |
By what and in what manner Love conceded, | |
That you should know your dubious desires?" | |
And she to me: "There is no greater sorrow | |
Than to be mindful of the happy time | |
In misery, and that thy Teacher knows. | |
But, if to recognise the earliest root | |
Of love in us thou hast so great desire, | |
I will do even as he who weeps and speaks. | |
One day we reading were for our delight | |
Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthral. | |
Alone we were and without any fear. | |
Full many a time our eyes together drew | |
That reading, and drove the colour from our faces; | |
But one point only was it that o'ercame us. | |
When as we read of the much-longed-for smile | |
Being by such a noble lover kissed, | |
This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, | |
Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. | |
Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. | |
That day no farther did we read therein." | |
And all the while one spirit uttered this, | |
The other one did weep so, that, for pity, | |
I swooned away as if I had been dying, | |
And fell, even as a dead body falls. | |
Inferno: Canto VI | |
At the return of consciousness, that closed | |
Before the pity of those two relations, | |
Which utterly with sadness had confused me, | |
New torments I behold, and new tormented | |
Around me, whichsoever way I move, | |
And whichsoever way I turn, and gaze. | |
In the third circle am I of the rain | |
Eternal, maledict, and cold, and heavy; | |
Its law and quality are never new. | |
Huge hail, and water sombre-hued, and snow, | |
Athwart the tenebrous air pour down amain; | |
Noisome the earth is, that receiveth this. | |
Cerberus, monster cruel and uncouth, | |
With his three gullets like a dog is barking | |
Over the people that are there submerged. | |
Red eyes he has, and unctuous beard and black, | |
And belly large, and armed with claws his hands; | |
He rends the spirits, flays, and quarters them. | |
Howl the rain maketh them like unto dogs; | |
One side they make a shelter for the other; | |
Oft turn themselves the wretched reprobates. | |
When Cerberus perceived us, the great worm! | |
His mouths he opened, and displayed his tusks; | |
Not a limb had he that was motionless. | |
And my Conductor, with his spans extended, | |
Took of the earth, and with his fists well filled, | |
He threw it into those rapacious gullets. | |
Such as that dog is, who by barking craves, | |
And quiet grows soon as his food he gnaws, | |
For to devour it he but thinks and struggles, | |
The like became those muzzles filth-begrimed | |
Of Cerberus the demon, who so thunders | |
Over the souls that they would fain be deaf. | |
We passed across the shadows, which subdues | |
The heavy rain-storm, and we placed our feet | |
Upon their vanity that person seems. | |
They all were lying prone upon the earth, | |
Excepting one, who sat upright as soon | |
As he beheld us passing on before him. | |
"O thou that art conducted through this Hell," | |
He said to me, "recall me, if thou canst; | |
Thyself wast made before I was unmade." | |
And I to him: "The anguish which thou hast | |
Perhaps doth draw thee out of my remembrance, | |
So that it seems not I have ever seen thee. | |
But tell me who thou art, that in so doleful | |
A place art put, and in such punishment, | |
If some are greater, none is so displeasing." | |
And he to me: "Thy city, which is full | |
Of envy so that now the sack runs over, | |
Held me within it in the life serene. | |
You citizens were wont to call me Ciacco; | |
For the pernicious sin of gluttony | |
I, as thou seest, am battered by this rain. | |
And I, sad soul, am not the only one, | |
For all these suffer the like penalty | |
For the like sin;" and word no more spake he. | |
I answered him: "Ciacco, thy wretchedness | |
Weighs on me so that it to weep invites me; | |
But tell me, if thou knowest, to what shall come | |
The citizens of the divided city; | |
If any there be just; and the occasion | |
Tell me why so much discord has assailed it." | |
And he to me: "They, after long contention, | |
Will come to bloodshed; and the rustic party | |
Will drive the other out with much offence. | |
Then afterwards behoves it this one fall | |
Within three suns, and rise again the other | |
By force of him who now is on the coast. | |
High will it hold its forehead a long while, | |
Keeping the other under heavy burdens, | |
Howe'er it weeps thereat and is indignant. | |
The just are two, and are not understood there; | |
Envy and Arrogance and Avarice | |
Are the three sparks that have all hearts enkindled." | |
Here ended he his tearful utterance; | |
And I to him: "I wish thee still to teach me, | |
And make a gift to me of further speech. | |
Farinata and Tegghiaio, once so worthy, | |
Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, and Mosca, | |
And others who on good deeds set their thoughts, | |
Say where they are, and cause that I may know them; | |
For great desire constraineth me to learn | |
If Heaven doth sweeten them, or Hell envenom." | |
And he: "They are among the blacker souls; | |
A different sin downweighs them to the bottom; | |
If thou so far descendest, thou canst see them. | |
But when thou art again in the sweet world, | |
I pray thee to the mind of others bring me; | |
No more I tell thee and no more I answer." | |
Then his straightforward eyes he turned askance, | |
Eyed me a little, and then bowed his head; | |
He fell therewith prone like the other blind. | |
And the Guide said to me: "He wakes no more | |
This side the sound of the angelic trumpet; | |
When shall approach the hostile Potentate, | |
Each one shall find again his dismal tomb, | |
Shall reassume his flesh and his own figure, | |
Shall hear what through eternity re-echoes." | |
So we passed onward o'er the filthy mixture | |
Of shadows and of rain with footsteps slow, | |
Touching a little on the future life. | |
Wherefore I said: "Master, these torments here, | |
Will they increase after the mighty sentence, | |
Or lesser be, or will they be as burning?" | |
And he to me: "Return unto thy science, | |
Which wills, that as the thing more perfect is, | |
The more it feels of pleasure and of pain. | |
Albeit that this people maledict | |
To true perfection never can attain, | |
Hereafter more than now they look to be." | |
Round in a circle by that road we went, | |
Speaking much more, which I do not repeat; | |
We came unto the point where the descent is; | |
There we found Plutus the great enemy. | |
Inferno: Canto VII | |
"Pape Satan, Pape Satan, Aleppe!" | |
Thus Plutus with his clucking voice began; | |
And that benignant Sage, who all things knew, | |
Said, to encourage me: "Let not thy fear | |
Harm thee; for any power that he may have | |
Shall not prevent thy going down this crag." | |
Then he turned round unto that bloated lip, | |
And said: "Be silent, thou accursed wolf; | |
Consume within thyself with thine own rage. | |
Not causeless is this journey to the abyss; | |
Thus is it willed on high, where Michael wrought | |
Vengeance upon the proud adultery." | |
Even as the sails inflated by the wind | |
Involved together fall when snaps the mast, | |
So fell the cruel monster to the earth. | |
Thus we descended into the fourth chasm, | |
Gaining still farther on the dolesome shore | |
Which all the woe of the universe insacks. | |
Justice of God, ah! who heaps up so many | |
New toils and sufferings as I beheld? | |
And why doth our transgression waste us so? | |
As doth the billow there upon Charybdis, | |
That breaks itself on that which it encounters, | |
So here the folk must dance their roundelay. | |
Here saw I people, more than elsewhere, many, | |
On one side and the other, with great howls, | |
Rolling weights forward by main force of chest. | |
They clashed together, and then at that point | |
Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde, | |
Crying, "Why keepest?" and, "Why squanderest thou?" | |
Thus they returned along the lurid circle | |
On either hand unto the opposite point, | |
Shouting their shameful metre evermore. | |
Then each, when he arrived there, wheeled about | |
Through his half-circle to another joust; | |
And I, who had my heart pierced as it were, | |
Exclaimed: "My Master, now declare to me | |
What people these are, and if all were clerks, | |
These shaven crowns upon the left of us." | |
And he to me: "All of them were asquint | |
In intellect in the first life, so much | |
That there with measure they no spending made. | |
Clearly enough their voices bark it forth, | |
Whene'er they reach the two points of the circle, | |
Where sunders them the opposite defect. | |
Clerks those were who no hairy covering | |
Have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals, | |
In whom doth Avarice practise its excess." | |
And I: "My Master, among such as these | |
I ought forsooth to recognise some few, | |
Who were infected with these maladies." | |
And he to me: "Vain thought thou entertainest; | |
The undiscerning life which made them sordid | |
Now makes them unto all discernment dim. | |
Forever shall they come to these two buttings; | |
These from the sepulchre shall rise again | |
With the fist closed, and these with tresses shorn. | |
Ill giving and ill keeping the fair world | |
Have ta'en from them, and placed them in this scuffle; | |
Whate'er it be, no words adorn I for it. | |
Now canst thou, Son, behold the transient farce | |
Of goods that are committed unto Fortune, | |
For which the human race each other buffet; | |
For all the gold that is beneath the moon, | |
Or ever has been, of these weary souls | |
Could never make a single one repose." | |
"Master," I said to him, "now tell me also | |
What is this Fortune which thou speakest of, | |
That has the world's goods so within its clutches?" | |
And he to me: "O creatures imbecile, | |
What ignorance is this which doth beset you? | |
Now will I have thee learn my judgment of her. | |
He whose omniscience everything transcends | |
The heavens created, and gave who should guide them, | |
That every part to every part may shine, | |
Distributing the light in equal measure; | |
He in like manner to the mundane splendours | |
Ordained a general ministress and guide, | |
That she might change at times the empty treasures | |
From race to race, from one blood to another, | |
Beyond resistance of all human wisdom. | |
Therefore one people triumphs, and another | |
Languishes, in pursuance of her judgment, | |
Which hidden is, as in the grass a serpent. | |
Your knowledge has no counterstand against her; | |
She makes provision, judges, and pursues | |
Her governance, as theirs the other gods. | |
Her permutations have not any truce; | |
Necessity makes her precipitate, | |
So often cometh who his turn obtains. | |
And this is she who is so crucified | |
Even by those who ought to give her praise, | |
Giving her blame amiss, and bad repute. | |
But she is blissful, and she hears it not; | |
Among the other primal creatures gladsome | |
She turns her sphere, and blissful she rejoices. | |
Let us descend now unto greater woe; | |
Already sinks each star that was ascending | |
When I set out, and loitering is forbidden." | |
We crossed the circle to the other bank, | |
Near to a fount that boils, and pours itself | |
Along a gully that runs out of it. | |
The water was more sombre far than perse; | |
And we, in company with the dusky waves, | |
Made entrance downward by a path uncouth. | |
A marsh it makes, which has the name of Styx, | |
This tristful brooklet, when it has descended | |
Down to the foot of the malign gray shores. | |
And I, who stood intent upon beholding, | |
Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon, | |
All of them naked and with angry look. | |
They smote each other not alone with hands, | |
But with the head and with the breast and feet, | |
Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth. | |
Said the good Master: "Son, thou now beholdest | |
The souls of those whom anger overcame; | |
And likewise I would have thee know for certain | |
Beneath the water people are who sigh | |
And make this water bubble at the surface, | |
As the eye tells thee wheresoe'er it turns. | |
Fixed in the mire they say, 'We sullen were | |
In the sweet air, which by the sun is gladdened, | |
Bearing within ourselves the sluggish reek; | |
Now we are sullen in this sable mire.' | |
This hymn do they keep gurgling in their throats, | |
For with unbroken words they cannot say it." | |
Thus we went circling round the filthy fen | |
A great arc 'twixt the dry bank and the swamp, | |
With eyes turned unto those who gorge the mire; | |
Unto the foot of a tower we came at last. | |
Inferno: Canto VIII | |
I say, continuing, that long before | |
We to the foot of that high tower had come, | |
Our eyes went upward to the summit of it, | |
By reason of two flamelets we saw placed there, | |
And from afar another answer them, | |
So far, that hardly could the eye attain it. | |
And, to the sea of all discernment turned, | |
I said: "What sayeth this, and what respondeth | |
That other fire? and who are they that made it?" | |
And he to me: "Across the turbid waves | |
What is expected thou canst now discern, | |
If reek of the morass conceal it not." | |
Cord never shot an arrow from itself | |
That sped away athwart the air so swift, | |
As I beheld a very little boat | |
Come o'er the water tow'rds us at that moment, | |
Under the guidance of a single pilot, | |
Who shouted, "Now art thou arrived, fell soul?" | |
"Phlegyas, Phlegyas, thou criest out in vain | |
For this once," said my Lord; "thou shalt not have us | |
Longer than in the passing of the slough." | |
As he who listens to some great deceit | |
That has been done to him, and then resents it, | |
Such became Phlegyas, in his gathered wrath. | |
My Guide descended down into the boat, | |
And then he made me enter after him, | |
And only when I entered seemed it laden. | |
Soon as the Guide and I were in the boat, | |
The antique prow goes on its way, dividing | |
More of the water than 'tis wont with others. | |
While we were running through the dead canal, | |
Uprose in front of me one full of mire, | |
And said, "Who 'rt thou that comest ere the hour?" | |
And I to him: "Although I come, I stay not; | |
But who art thou that hast become so squalid?" | |
"Thou seest that I am one who weeps," he answered. | |
And I to him: "With weeping and with wailing, | |
Thou spirit maledict, do thou remain; | |
For thee I know, though thou art all defiled." | |
Then stretched he both his hands unto the boat; | |
Whereat my wary Master thrust him back, | |
Saying, "Away there with the other dogs!" | |
Thereafter with his arms he clasped my neck; | |
He kissed my face, and said: "Disdainful soul, | |
Blessed be she who bore thee in her bosom. | |
That was an arrogant person in the world; | |
Goodness is none, that decks his memory; | |
So likewise here his shade is furious. | |
How many are esteemed great kings up there, | |
Who here shall be like unto swine in mire, | |
Leaving behind them horrible dispraises!" | |
And I: "My Master, much should I be pleased, | |
If I could see him soused into this broth, | |
Before we issue forth out of the lake." | |
And he to me: "Ere unto thee the shore | |
Reveal itself, thou shalt be satisfied; | |
Such a desire 'tis meet thou shouldst enjoy." | |
A little after that, I saw such havoc | |
Made of him by the people of the mire, | |
That still I praise and thank my God for it. | |
They all were shouting, "At Philippo Argenti!" | |
And that exasperate spirit Florentine | |
Turned round upon himself with his own teeth. | |
We left him there, and more of him I tell not; | |
But on mine ears there smote a lamentation, | |
Whence forward I intent unbar mine eyes. | |
And the good Master said: "Even now, my Son, | |
The city draweth near whose name is Dis, | |
With the grave citizens, with the great throng." | |
And I: "Its mosques already, Master, clearly | |
Within there in the valley I discern | |
Vermilion, as if issuing from the fire | |
They were." And he to me: "The fire eternal | |
That kindles them within makes them look red, | |
As thou beholdest in this nether Hell." | |
Then we arrived within the moats profound, | |
That circumvallate that disconsolate city; | |
The walls appeared to me to be of iron. | |
Not without making first a circuit wide, | |
We came unto a place where loud the pilot | |
Cried out to us, "Debark, here is the entrance." | |
More than a thousand at the gates I saw | |
Out of the Heavens rained down, who angrily | |
Were saying, "Who is this that without death | |
Goes through the kingdom of the people dead?" | |
And my sagacious Master made a sign | |
Of wishing secretly to speak with them. | |
A little then they quelled their great disdain, | |
And said: "Come thou alone, and he begone | |
Who has so boldly entered these dominions. | |
Let him return alone by his mad road; | |
Try, if he can; for thou shalt here remain, | |
Who hast escorted him through such dark regions." | |
Think, Reader, if I was discomforted | |
At utterance of the accursed words; | |
For never to return here I believed. | |
"O my dear Guide, who more than seven times | |
Hast rendered me security, and drawn me | |
From imminent peril that before me stood, | |
Do not desert me," said I, "thus undone; | |
And if the going farther be denied us, | |
Let us retrace our steps together swiftly." | |
And that Lord, who had led me thitherward, | |
Said unto me: "Fear not; because our passage | |
None can take from us, it by Such is given. | |
But here await me, and thy weary spirit | |
Comfort and nourish with a better hope; | |
For in this nether world I will not leave thee." | |
So onward goes and there abandons me | |
My Father sweet, and I remain in doubt, | |
For No and Yes within my head contend. | |
I could not hear what he proposed to them; | |
But with them there he did not linger long, | |
Ere each within in rivalry ran back. | |
They closed the portals, those our adversaries, | |
On my Lord's breast, who had remained without | |
And turned to me with footsteps far between. | |
His eyes cast down, his forehead shorn had he | |
Of all its boldness, and he said, with sighs, | |
"Who has denied to me the dolesome houses?" | |
And unto me: "Thou, because I am angry, | |
Fear not, for I will conquer in the trial, | |
Whatever for defence within be planned. | |
This arrogance of theirs is nothing new; | |
For once they used it at less secret gate, | |
Which finds itself without a fastening still. | |
O'er it didst thou behold the dead inscription; | |
And now this side of it descends the steep, | |
Passing across the circles without escort, | |
One by whose means the city shall be opened." | |
Inferno: Canto IX | |
That hue which cowardice brought out on me, | |
Beholding my Conductor backward turn, | |
Sooner repressed within him his new colour. | |
He stopped attentive, like a man who listens, | |
Because the eye could not conduct him far | |
Through the black air, and through the heavy fog. | |
"Still it behoveth us to win the fight," | |
Began he; "Else. . .Such offered us herself. . . | |
O how I long that some one here arrive!" | |
Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning | |
He covered up with what came afterward, | |
That they were words quite different from the first; | |
But none the less his saying gave me fear, | |
Because I carried out the broken phrase, | |
Perhaps to a worse meaning than he had. | |
"Into this bottom of the doleful conch | |
Doth any e'er descend from the first grade, | |
Which for its pain has only hope cut off?" | |
This question put I; and he answered me: | |
"Seldom it comes to pass that one of us | |
Maketh the journey upon which I go. | |
True is it, once before I here below | |
Was conjured by that pitiless Erictho, | |
Who summoned back the shades unto their bodies. | |
Naked of me short while the flesh had been, | |
Before within that wall she made me enter, | |
To bring a spirit from the circle of Judas; | |
That is the lowest region and the darkest, | |
And farthest from the heaven which circles all. | |
Well know I the way; therefore be reassured. | |
This fen, which a prodigious stench exhales, | |
Encompasses about the city dolent, | |
Where now we cannot enter without anger." | |
And more he said, but not in mind I have it; | |
Because mine eye had altogether drawn me | |
Tow'rds the high tower with the red-flaming summit, | |
Where in a moment saw I swift uprisen | |
The three infernal Furies stained with blood, | |
Who had the limbs of women and their mien, | |
And with the greenest hydras were begirt; | |
Small serpents and cerastes were their tresses, | |
Wherewith their horrid temples were entwined. | |
And he who well the handmaids of the Queen | |
Of everlasting lamentation knew, | |
Said unto me: "Behold the fierce Erinnys. | |
This is Megaera, on the left-hand side; | |
She who is weeping on the right, Alecto; | |
Tisiphone is between;" and then was silent. | |
Each one her breast was rending with her nails; | |
They beat them with their palms, and cried so loud, | |
That I for dread pressed close unto the Poet. | |
"Medusa come, so we to stone will change him!" | |
All shouted looking down; "in evil hour | |
Avenged we not on Theseus his assault!" | |
"Turn thyself round, and keep thine eyes close shut, | |
For if the Gorgon appear, and thou shouldst see it, | |
No more returning upward would there be." | |
Thus said the Master; and he turned me round | |
Himself, and trusted not unto my hands | |
So far as not to blind me with his own. | |
O ye who have undistempered intellects, | |
Observe the doctrine that conceals itself | |
Beneath the veil of the mysterious verses! | |
And now there came across the turbid waves | |
The clangour of a sound with terror fraught, | |
Because of which both of the margins trembled; | |
Not otherwise it was than of a wind | |
Impetuous on account of adverse heats, | |
That smites the forest, and, without restraint, | |
The branches rends, beats down, and bears away; | |
Right onward, laden with dust, it goes superb, | |
And puts to flight the wild beasts and the shepherds. | |
Mine eyes he loosed, and said: "Direct the nerve | |
Of vision now along that ancient foam, | |
There yonder where that smoke is most intense." | |
Even as the frogs before the hostile serpent | |
Across the water scatter all abroad, | |
Until each one is huddled in the earth. | |
More than a thousand ruined souls I saw, | |
Thus fleeing from before one who on foot | |
Was passing o'er the Styx with soles unwet. | |
From off his face he fanned that unctuous air, | |
Waving his left hand oft in front of him, | |
And only with that anguish seemed he weary. | |
Well I perceived one sent from Heaven was he, | |
And to the Master turned; and he made sign | |
That I should quiet stand, and bow before him. | |
Ah! how disdainful he appeared to me! | |
He reached the gate, and with a little rod | |
He opened it, for there was no resistance. | |
"O banished out of Heaven, people despised!" | |
Thus he began upon the horrid threshold; | |
"Whence is this arrogance within you couched? | |
Wherefore recalcitrate against that will, | |
From which the end can never be cut off, | |
And which has many times increased your pain? | |
What helpeth it to butt against the fates? | |
Your Cerberus, if you remember well, | |
For that still bears his chin and gullet peeled." | |
Then he returned along the miry road, | |
And spake no word to us, but had the look | |
Of one whom other care constrains and goads | |
Than that of him who in his presence is; | |
And we our feet directed tow'rds the city, | |
After those holy words all confident. | |
Within we entered without any contest; | |
And I, who inclination had to see | |
What the condition such a fortress holds, | |
Soon as I was within, cast round mine eye, | |
And see on every hand an ample plain, | |
Full of distress and torment terrible. | |
Even as at Arles, where stagnant grows the Rhone, | |
Even as at Pola near to the Quarnaro, | |
That shuts in Italy and bathes its borders, | |
The sepulchres make all the place uneven; | |
So likewise did they there on every side, | |
Saving that there the manner was more bitter; | |
For flames between the sepulchres were scattered, | |
By which they so intensely heated were, | |
That iron more so asks not any art. | |
All of their coverings uplifted were, | |
And from them issued forth such dire laments, | |
Sooth seemed they of the wretched and tormented. | |
And I: "My Master, what are all those people | |
Who, having sepulture within those tombs, | |
Make themselves audible by doleful sighs?" | |
And he to me: "Here are the Heresiarchs, | |
With their disciples of all sects, and much | |
More than thou thinkest laden are the tombs. | |
Here like together with its like is buried; | |
And more and less the monuments are heated." | |
And when he to the right had turned, we passed | |
Between the torments and high parapets. | |
Inferno: Canto X | |
Now onward goes, along a narrow path | |
Between the torments and the city wall, | |
My Master, and I follow at his back. | |
"O power supreme, that through these impious circles | |
Turnest me," I began, "as pleases thee, | |
Speak to me, and my longings satisfy; | |
The people who are lying in these tombs, | |
Might they be seen? already are uplifted | |
The covers all, and no one keepeth guard." | |
And he to me: "They all will be closed up | |
When from Jehoshaphat they shall return | |
Here with the bodies they have left above. | |
Their cemetery have upon this side | |
With Epicurus all his followers, | |
Who with the body mortal make the soul; | |
But in the question thou dost put to me, | |
Within here shalt thou soon be satisfied, | |
And likewise in the wish thou keepest silent." | |
And I: "Good Leader, I but keep concealed | |
From thee my heart, that I may speak the less, | |
Nor only now hast thou thereto disposed me." | |
"O Tuscan, thou who through the city of fire | |
Goest alive, thus speaking modestly, | |
Be pleased to stay thy footsteps in this place. | |
Thy mode of speaking makes thee manifest | |
A native of that noble fatherland, | |
To which perhaps I too molestful was." | |
Upon a sudden issued forth this sound | |
From out one of the tombs; wherefore I pressed, | |
Fearing, a little nearer to my Leader. | |
And unto me he said: "Turn thee; what dost thou? | |
Behold there Farinata who has risen; | |
From the waist upwards wholly shalt thou see him." | |
I had already fixed mine eyes on his, | |
And he uprose erect with breast and front | |
E'en as if Hell he had in great despite. | |
And with courageous hands and prompt my Leader | |
Thrust me between the sepulchres towards him, | |
Exclaiming, "Let thy words explicit be." | |
As soon as I was at the foot of his tomb | |
Somewhat he eyed me, and, as if disdainful, | |
Then asked of me, "Who were thine ancestors?" | |
I, who desirous of obeying was, | |
Concealed it not, but all revealed to him; | |
Whereat he raised his brows a little upward. | |
Then said he: "Fiercely adverse have they been | |
To me, and to my fathers, and my party; | |
So that two several times I scattered them." | |
"If they were banished, they returned on all sides," | |
I answered him, "the first time and the second; | |
But yours have not acquired that art aright." | |
Then there uprose upon the sight, uncovered | |
Down to the chin, a shadow at his side; | |
I think that he had risen on his knees. | |
Round me he gazed, as if solicitude | |
He had to see if some one else were with me, | |
But after his suspicion was all spent, | |
Weeping, he said to me: "If through this blind | |
Prison thou goest by loftiness of genius, | |
Where is my son? and why is he not with thee?" | |
And I to him: "I come not of myself; | |
He who is waiting yonder leads me here, | |
Whom in disdain perhaps your Guido had." | |
His language and the mode of punishment | |
Already unto me had read his name; | |
On that account my answer was so full. | |
Up starting suddenly, he cried out: "How | |
Saidst thou,--he had? Is he not still alive? | |
Does not the sweet light strike upon his eyes?" | |
When he became aware of some delay, | |
Which I before my answer made, supine | |
He fell again, and forth appeared no more. | |
But the other, magnanimous, at whose desire | |
I had remained, did not his aspect change, | |
Neither his neck he moved, nor bent his side. | |
"And if," continuing his first discourse, | |
"They have that art," he said, "not learned aright, | |
That more tormenteth me, than doth this bed. | |
But fifty times shall not rekindled be | |
The countenance of the Lady who reigns here, | |
Ere thou shalt know how heavy is that art; | |
And as thou wouldst to the sweet world return, | |
Say why that people is so pitiless | |
Against my race in each one of its laws?" | |
Whence I to him: "The slaughter and great carnage | |
Which have with crimson stained the Arbia, cause | |
Such orisons in our temple to be made." | |
After his head he with a sigh had shaken, | |
"There I was not alone," he said, "nor surely | |
Without a cause had with the others moved. | |
But there I was alone, where every one | |
Consented to the laying waste of Florence, | |
He who defended her with open face." | |
"Ah! so hereafter may your seed repose," | |
I him entreated, "solve for me that knot, | |
Which has entangled my conceptions here. | |
It seems that you can see, if I hear rightly, | |
Beforehand whatsoe'er time brings with it, | |
And in the present have another mode." | |
"We see, like those who have imperfect sight, | |
The things," he said, "that distant are from us; | |
So much still shines on us the Sovereign Ruler. | |
When they draw near, or are, is wholly vain | |
Our intellect, and if none brings it to us, | |
Not anything know we of your human state. | |
Hence thou canst understand, that wholly dead | |
Will be our knowledge from the moment when | |
The portal of the future shall be closed." | |
Then I, as if compunctious for my fault, | |
Said: "Now, then, you will tell that fallen one, | |
That still his son is with the living joined. | |
And if just now, in answering, I was dumb, | |
Tell him I did it because I was thinking | |
Already of the error you have solved me." | |
And now my Master was recalling me, | |
Wherefore more eagerly I prayed the spirit | |
That he would tell me who was with him there. | |
He said: "With more than a thousand here I lie; | |
Within here is the second Frederick, | |
And the Cardinal, and of the rest I speak not." | |
Thereon he hid himself; and I towards | |
The ancient poet turned my steps, reflecting | |
Upon that saying, which seemed hostile to me. | |
He moved along; and afterward thus going, | |
He said to me, "Why art thou so bewildered?" | |
And I in his inquiry satisfied him. | |
"Let memory preserve what thou hast heard | |
Against thyself," that Sage commanded me, | |
"And now attend here;" and he raised his finger. | |
"When thou shalt be before the radiance sweet | |
Of her whose beauteous eyes all things behold, | |
From her thou'lt know the journey of thy life." | |
Unto the left hand then he turned his feet; | |
We left the wall, and went towards the middle, | |
Along a path that strikes into a valley, | |
Which even up there unpleasant made its stench. | |
Inferno: Canto XI | |
Upon the margin of a lofty bank | |
Which great rocks broken in a circle made, | |
We came upon a still more cruel throng; | |
And there, by reason of the horrible | |
Excess of stench the deep abyss throws out, | |
We drew ourselves aside behind the cover | |
Of a great tomb, whereon I saw a writing, | |
Which said: "Pope Anastasius I hold, | |
Whom out of the right way Photinus drew." | |
"Slow it behoveth our descent to be, | |
So that the sense be first a little used | |
To the sad blast, and then we shall not heed it." | |
The Master thus; and unto him I said, | |
"Some compensation find, that the time pass not | |
Idly;" and he: "Thou seest I think of that. | |
My son, upon the inside of these rocks," | |
Began he then to say, "are three small circles, | |
From grade to grade, like those which thou art leaving. | |
They all are full of spirits maledict; | |
But that hereafter sight alone suffice thee, | |
Hear how and wherefore they are in constraint. | |
Of every malice that wins hate in Heaven, | |
Injury is the end; and all such end | |
Either by force or fraud afflicteth others. | |
But because fraud is man's peculiar vice, | |
More it displeases God; and so stand lowest | |
The fraudulent, and greater dole assails them. | |
All the first circle of the Violent is; | |
But since force may be used against three persons, | |
In three rounds 'tis divided and constructed. | |
To God, to ourselves, and to our neighbour can we | |
Use force; I say on them and on their things, | |
As thou shalt hear with reason manifest. | |
A death by violence, and painful wounds, | |
Are to our neighbour given; and in his substance | |
Ruin, and arson, and injurious levies; | |
Whence homicides, and he who smites unjustly, | |
Marauders, and freebooters, the first round | |
Tormenteth all in companies diverse. | |
Man may lay violent hands upon himself | |
And his own goods; and therefore in the second | |
Round must perforce without avail repent | |
Whoever of your world deprives himself, | |
Who games, and dissipates his property, | |
And weepeth there, where he should jocund be. | |
Violence can be done the Deity, | |
In heart denying and blaspheming Him, | |
And by disdaining Nature and her bounty. | |
And for this reason doth the smallest round | |
Seal with its signet Sodom and Cahors, | |
And who, disdaining God, speaks from the heart. | |
Fraud, wherewithal is every conscience stung, | |
A man may practise upon him who trusts, | |
And him who doth no confidence imburse. | |
This latter mode, it would appear, dissevers | |
Only the bond of love which Nature makes; | |
Wherefore within the second circle nestle | |
Hypocrisy, flattery, and who deals in magic, | |
Falsification, theft, and simony, | |
Panders, and barrators, and the like filth. | |
By the other mode, forgotten is that love | |
Which Nature makes, and what is after added, | |
From which there is a special faith engendered. | |
Hence in the smallest circle, where the point is | |
Of the Universe, upon which Dis is seated, | |
Whoe'er betrays for ever is consumed." | |
And I: "My Master, clear enough proceeds | |
Thy reasoning, and full well distinguishes | |
This cavern and the people who possess it. | |
But tell me, those within the fat lagoon, | |
Whom the wind drives, and whom the rain doth beat, | |
And who encounter with such bitter tongues, | |
Wherefore are they inside of the red city | |
Not punished, if God has them in his wrath, | |
And if he has not, wherefore in such fashion?" | |
And unto me he said: "Why wanders so | |
Thine intellect from that which it is wont? | |
Or, sooth, thy mind where is it elsewhere looking? | |
Hast thou no recollection of those words | |
With which thine Ethics thoroughly discusses | |
The dispositions three, that Heaven abides not,-- | |
Incontinence, and Malice, and insane | |
Bestiality? and how Incontinence | |
Less God offendeth, and less blame attracts? | |
If thou regardest this conclusion well, | |
And to thy mind recallest who they are | |
That up outside are undergoing penance, | |
Clearly wilt thou perceive why from these felons | |
They separated are, and why less wroth | |
Justice divine doth smite them with its hammer." | |
"O Sun, that healest all distempered vision, | |
Thou dost content me so, when thou resolvest, | |
That doubting pleases me no less than knowing! | |
Once more a little backward turn thee," said I, | |
"There where thou sayest that usury offends | |
Goodness divine, and disengage the knot." | |
"Philosophy," he said, "to him who heeds it, | |
Noteth, not only in one place alone, | |
After what manner Nature takes her course | |
From Intellect Divine, and from its art; | |
And if thy Physics carefully thou notest, | |
After not many pages shalt thou find, | |
That this your art as far as possible | |
Follows, as the disciple doth the master; | |
So that your art is, as it were, God's grandchild. | |
From these two, if thou bringest to thy mind | |
Genesis at the beginning, it behoves | |
Mankind to gain their life and to advance; | |
And since the usurer takes another way, | |
Nature herself and in her follower | |
Disdains he, for elsewhere he puts his hope. | |
But follow, now, as I would fain go on, | |
For quivering are the Fishes on the horizon, | |
And the Wain wholly over Caurus lies, | |
And far beyond there we descend the crag." | |
Inferno: Canto XII | |
The place where to descend the bank we came | |
Was alpine, and from what was there, moreover, | |
Of such a kind that every eye would shun it. | |
Such as that ruin is which in the flank | |
Smote, on this side of Trent, the Adige, | |
Either by earthquake or by failing stay, | |
For from the mountain's top, from which it moved, | |
Unto the plain the cliff is shattered so, | |
Some path 'twould give to him who was above; | |
Even such was the descent of that ravine, | |
And on the border of the broken chasm | |
The infamy of Crete was stretched along, | |
Who was conceived in the fictitious cow; | |
And when he us beheld, he bit himself, | |
Even as one whom anger racks within. | |
My Sage towards him shouted: "Peradventure | |
Thou think'st that here may be the Duke of Athens, | |
Who in the world above brought death to thee? | |
Get thee gone, beast, for this one cometh not | |
Instructed by thy sister, but he comes | |
In order to behold your punishments." | |
As is that bull who breaks loose at the moment | |
In which he has received the mortal blow, | |
Who cannot walk, but staggers here and there, | |
The Minotaur beheld I do the like; | |
And he, the wary, cried: "Run to the passage; | |
While he wroth, 'tis well thou shouldst descend." | |
Thus down we took our way o'er that discharge | |
Of stones, which oftentimes did move themselves | |
Beneath my feet, from the unwonted burden. | |
Thoughtful I went; and he said: "Thou art thinking | |
Perhaps upon this ruin, which is guarded | |
By that brute anger which just now I quenched. | |
Now will I have thee know, the other time | |
I here descended to the nether Hell, | |
This precipice had not yet fallen down. | |
But truly, if I well discern, a little | |
Before His coming who the mighty spoil | |
Bore off from Dis, in the supernal circle, | |
Upon all sides the deep and loathsome valley | |
Trembled so, that I thought the Universe | |
Was thrilled with love, by which there are who think | |
The world ofttimes converted into chaos; | |
And at that moment this primeval crag | |
Both here and elsewhere made such overthrow. | |
But fix thine eyes below; for draweth near | |
The river of blood, within which boiling is | |
Whoe'er by violence doth injure others." | |
O blind cupidity, O wrath insane, | |
That spurs us onward so in our short life, | |
And in the eternal then so badly steeps us! | |
I saw an ample moat bent like a bow, | |
As one which all the plain encompasses, | |
Conformable to what my Guide had said. | |
And between this and the embankment's foot | |
Centaurs in file were running, armed with arrows, | |
As in the world they used the chase to follow. | |
Beholding us descend, each one stood still, | |
And from the squadron three detached themselves, | |
With bows and arrows in advance selected; | |
And from afar one cried: "Unto what torment | |
Come ye, who down the hillside are descending? | |
Tell us from there; if not, I draw the bow." | |
My Master said: "Our answer will we make | |
To Chiron, near you there; in evil hour, | |
That will of thine was evermore so hasty." | |
Then touched he me, and said: "This one is Nessus, | |
Who perished for the lovely Dejanira, | |
And for himself, himself did vengeance take. | |
And he in the midst, who at his breast is gazing, | |
Is the great Chiron, who brought up Achilles; | |
That other Pholus is, who was so wrathful. | |
Thousands and thousands go about the moat | |
Shooting with shafts whatever soul emerges | |
Out of the blood, more than his crime allots." | |
Near we approached unto those monsters fleet; | |
Chiron an arrow took, and with the notch | |
Backward upon his jaws he put his beard. | |
After he had uncovered his great mouth, | |
He said to his companions: "Are you ware | |
That he behind moveth whate'er he touches? | |
Thus are not wont to do the feet of dead men." | |
And my good Guide, who now was at his breast, | |
Where the two natures are together joined, | |
Replied: "Indeed he lives, and thus alone | |
Me it behoves to show him the dark valley; | |
Necessity, and not delight, impels us. | |
Some one withdrew from singing Halleluja, | |
Who unto me committed this new office; | |
No thief is he, nor I a thievish spirit. | |
But by that virtue through which I am moving | |
My steps along this savage thoroughfare, | |
Give us some one of thine, to be with us, | |
And who may show us where to pass the ford, | |
And who may carry this one on his back; | |
For 'tis no spirit that can walk the air." | |
Upon his right breast Chiron wheeled about, | |
And said to Nessus: "Turn and do thou guide them, | |
And warn aside, if other band may meet you." | |
We with our faithful escort onward moved | |
Along the brink of the vermilion boiling, | |
Wherein the boiled were uttering loud laments. | |
People I saw within up to the eyebrows, | |
And the great Centaur said: "Tyrants are these, | |
Who dealt in bloodshed and in pillaging. | |
Here they lament their pitiless mischiefs; here | |
Is Alexander, and fierce Dionysius | |
Who upon Sicily brought dolorous years. | |
That forehead there which has the hair so black | |
Is Azzolin; and the other who is blond, | |
Obizzo is of Esti, who, in truth, | |
Up in the world was by his stepson slain." | |
Then turned I to the Poet; and he said, | |
"Now he be first to thee, and second I." | |
A little farther on the Centaur stopped | |
Above a folk, who far down as the throat | |
Seemed from that boiling stream to issue forth. | |
A shade he showed us on one side alone, | |
Saying: "He cleft asunder in God's bosom | |
The heart that still upon the Thames is honoured." | |
Then people saw I, who from out the river | |
Lifted their heads and also all the chest; | |
And many among these I recognised. | |
Thus ever more and more grew shallower | |
That blood, so that the feet alone it covered; | |
And there across the moat our passage was. | |
"Even as thou here upon this side beholdest | |
The boiling stream, that aye diminishes," | |
The Centaur said, "I wish thee to believe | |
That on this other more and more declines | |
Its bed, until it reunites itself | |
Where it behoveth tyranny to groan. | |
Justice divine, upon this side, is goading | |
That Attila, who was a scourge on earth, | |
And Pyrrhus, and Sextus; and for ever milks | |
The tears which with the boiling it unseals | |
In Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo, | |
Who made upon the highways so much war." | |
Then back he turned, and passed again the ford. | |
Inferno: Canto XIII | |
Not yet had Nessus reached the other side, | |
When we had put ourselves within a wood, | |
That was not marked by any path whatever. | |
Not foliage green, but of a dusky colour, | |
Not branches smooth, but gnarled and intertangled, | |
Not apple-trees were there, but thorns with poison. | |
Such tangled thickets have not, nor so dense, | |
Those savage wild beasts, that in hatred hold | |
'Twixt Cecina and Corneto the tilled places. | |
There do the hideous Harpies make their nests, | |
Who chased the Trojans from the Strophades, | |
With sad announcement of impending doom; | |
Broad wings have they, and necks and faces human, | |
And feet with claws, and their great bellies fledged; | |
They make laments upon the wondrous trees. | |
And the good Master: "Ere thou enter farther, | |
Know that thou art within the second round," | |
Thus he began to say, "and shalt be, till | |
Thou comest out upon the horrible sand; | |
Therefore look well around, and thou shalt see | |
Things that will credence give unto my speech." | |
I heard on all sides lamentations uttered, | |
And person none beheld I who might make them, | |
Whence, utterly bewildered, I stood still. | |
I think he thought that I perhaps might think | |
So many voices issued through those trunks | |
From people who concealed themselves from us; | |
Therefore the Master said: "If thou break off | |
Some little spray from any of these trees, | |
The thoughts thou hast will wholly be made vain." | |
Then stretched I forth my hand a little forward, | |
And plucked a branchlet off from a great thorn; | |
And the trunk cried, "Why dost thou mangle me?" | |
After it had become embrowned with blood, | |
It recommenced its cry: "Why dost thou rend me? | |
Hast thou no spirit of pity whatsoever? | |
Men once we were, and now are changed to trees; | |
Indeed, thy hand should be more pitiful, | |
Even if the souls of serpents we had been." | |
As out of a green brand, that is on fire | |
At one of the ends, and from the other drips | |
And hisses with the wind that is escaping; | |
So from that splinter issued forth together | |
Both words and blood; whereat I let the tip | |
Fall, and stood like a man who is afraid. | |
"Had he been able sooner to believe," | |
My Sage made answer, "O thou wounded soul, | |
What only in my verses he has seen, | |
Not upon thee had he stretched forth his hand; | |
Whereas the thing incredible has caused me | |
To put him to an act which grieveth me. | |
But tell him who thou wast, so that by way | |
Of some amends thy fame he may refresh | |
Up in the world, to which he can return." | |
And the trunk said: "So thy sweet words allure me, | |
I cannot silent be; and you be vexed not, | |
That I a little to discourse am tempted. | |
I am the one who both keys had in keeping | |
Of Frederick's heart, and turned them to and fro | |
So softly in unlocking and in locking, | |
That from his secrets most men I withheld; | |
Fidelity I bore the glorious office | |
So great, I lost thereby my sleep and pulses. | |
The courtesan who never from the dwelling | |
Of Caesar turned aside her strumpet eyes, | |
Death universal and the vice of courts, | |
Inflamed against me all the other minds, | |
And they, inflamed, did so inflame Augustus, | |
That my glad honours turned to dismal mournings. | |
My spirit, in disdainful exultation, | |
Thinking by dying to escape disdain, | |
Made me unjust against myself, the just. | |
I, by the roots unwonted of this wood, | |
Do swear to you that never broke I faith | |
Unto my lord, who was so worthy of honour; | |
And to the world if one of you return, | |
Let him my memory comfort, which is lying | |
Still prostrate from the blow that envy dealt it." | |
Waited awhile, and then: "Since he is silent," | |
The Poet said to me, "lose not the time, | |
But speak, and question him, if more may please thee." | |
Whence I to him: "Do thou again inquire | |
Concerning what thou thinks't will satisfy me; | |
For I cannot, such pity is in my heart." | |
Therefore he recommenced: "So may the man | |
Do for thee freely what thy speech implores, | |
Spirit incarcerate, again be pleased | |
To tell us in what way the soul is bound | |
Within these knots; and tell us, if thou canst, | |
If any from such members e'er is freed." | |
Then blew the trunk amain, and afterward | |
The wind was into such a voice converted: | |
"With brevity shall be replied to you. | |
When the exasperated soul abandons | |
The body whence it rent itself away, | |
Minos consigns it to the seventh abyss. | |
It falls into the forest, and no part | |
Is chosen for it; but where Fortune hurls it, | |
There like a grain of spelt it germinates. | |
It springs a sapling, and a forest tree; | |
The Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves, | |
Do pain create, and for the pain an outlet. | |
Like others for our spoils shall we return; | |
But not that any one may them revest, | |
For 'tis not just to have what one casts off. | |
Here we shall drag them, and along the dismal | |
Forest our bodies shall suspended be, | |
Each to the thorn of his molested shade." | |
We were attentive still unto the trunk, | |
Thinking that more it yet might wish to tell us, | |
When by a tumult we were overtaken, | |
In the same way as he is who perceives | |
The boar and chase approaching to his stand, | |
Who hears the crashing of the beasts and branches; | |
And two behold! upon our left-hand side, | |
Naked and scratched, fleeing so furiously, | |
That of the forest, every fan they broke. | |
He who was in advance: "Now help, Death, help!" | |
And the other one, who seemed to lag too much, | |
Was shouting: "Lano, were not so alert | |
Those legs of thine at joustings of the Toppo!" | |
And then, perchance because his breath was failing, | |
He grouped himself together with a bush. | |
Behind them was the forest full of black | |
She-mastiffs, ravenous, and swift of foot | |
As greyhounds, who are issuing from the chain. | |
On him who had crouched down they set their teeth, | |
And him they lacerated piece by piece, | |
Thereafter bore away those aching members. | |
Thereat my Escort took me by the hand, | |
And led me to the bush, that all in vain | |
Was weeping from its bloody lacerations. | |
"O Jacopo," it said, "of Sant' Andrea, | |
What helped it thee of me to make a screen? | |
What blame have I in thy nefarious life?" | |
When near him had the Master stayed his steps, | |
He said: "Who wast thou, that through wounds so many | |
Art blowing out with blood thy dolorous speech?" | |
And he to us: "O souls, that hither come | |
To look upon the shameful massacre | |
That has so rent away from me my leaves, | |
Gather them up beneath the dismal bush; | |
I of that city was which to the Baptist | |
Changed its first patron, wherefore he for this | |
Forever with his art will make it sad. | |
And were it not that on the pass of Arno | |
Some glimpses of him are remaining still, | |
Those citizens, who afterwards rebuilt it | |
Upon the ashes left by Attila, | |
In vain had caused their labour to be done. | |
Of my own house I made myself a gibbet." | |
Inferno: Canto XIV | |
Because the charity of my native place | |
Constrained me, gathered I the scattered leaves, | |
And gave them back to him, who now was hoarse. | |
Then came we to the confine, where disparted | |
The second round is from the third, and where | |
A horrible form of Justice is beheld. | |
Clearly to manifest these novel things, | |
I say that we arrived upon a plain, | |
Which from its bed rejecteth every plant; | |
The dolorous forest is a garland to it | |
All round about, as the sad moat to that; | |
There close upon the edge we stayed our feet. | |
The soil was of an arid and thick sand, | |
Not of another fashion made than that | |
Which by the feet of Cato once was pressed. | |
Vengeance of God, O how much oughtest thou | |
By each one to be dreaded, who doth read | |
That which was manifest unto mine eyes! | |
Of naked souls beheld I many herds, | |
Who all were weeping very miserably, | |
And over them seemed set a law diverse. | |
Supine upon the ground some folk were lying; | |
And some were sitting all drawn up together, | |
And others went about continually. | |
Those who were going round were far the more, | |
And those were less who lay down to their torment, | |
But had their tongues more loosed to lamentation. | |
O'er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall, | |
Were raining down dilated flakes of fire, | |
As of the snow on Alp without a wind. | |
As Alexander, in those torrid parts | |
Of India, beheld upon his host | |
Flames fall unbroken till they reached the ground. | |
Whence he provided with his phalanxes | |
To trample down the soil, because the vapour | |
Better extinguished was while it was single; | |
Thus was descending the eternal heat, | |
Whereby the sand was set on fire, like tinder | |
Beneath the steel, for doubling of the dole. | |
Without repose forever was the dance | |
Of miserable hands, now there, now here, | |
Shaking away from off them the fresh gleeds. | |
"Master," began I, "thou who overcomest | |
All things except the demons dire, that issued | |
Against us at the entrance of the gate, | |
Who is that mighty one who seems to heed not | |
The fire, and lieth lowering and disdainful, | |
So that the rain seems not to ripen him?" | |
And he himself, who had become aware | |
That I was questioning my Guide about him, | |
Cried: "Such as I was living, am I, dead. | |
If Jove should weary out his smith, from whom | |
He seized in anger the sharp thunderbolt, | |
Wherewith upon the last day I was smitten, | |
And if he wearied out by turns the others | |
In Mongibello at the swarthy forge, | |
Vociferating, 'Help, good Vulcan, help!' | |
Even as he did there at the fight of Phlegra, | |
And shot his bolts at me with all his might, | |
He would not have thereby a joyous vengeance." | |
Then did my Leader speak with such great force, | |
That I had never heard him speak so loud: | |
"O Capaneus, in that is not extinguished | |
Thine arrogance, thou punished art the more; | |
Not any torment, saving thine own rage, | |
Would be unto thy fury pain complete." | |
Then he turned round to me with better lip, | |
Saying: "One of the Seven Kings was he | |
Who Thebes besieged, and held, and seems to hold | |
God in disdain, and little seems to prize him; | |
But, as I said to him, his own despites | |
Are for his breast the fittest ornaments. | |
Now follow me, and mind thou do not place | |
As yet thy feet upon the burning sand, | |
But always keep them close unto the wood." | |
Speaking no word, we came to where there gushes | |
Forth from the wood a little rivulet, | |
Whose redness makes my hair still stand on end. | |
As from the Bulicame springs the brooklet, | |
The sinful women later share among them, | |
So downward through the sand it went its way. | |
The bottom of it, and both sloping banks, | |
Were made of stone, and the margins at the side; | |
Whence I perceived that there the passage was. | |
"In all the rest which I have shown to thee | |
Since we have entered in within the gate | |
Whose threshold unto no one is denied, | |
Nothing has been discovered by thine eyes | |
So notable as is the present river, | |
Which all the little flames above it quenches." | |
These words were of my Leader; whence I prayed him | |
That he would give me largess of the food, | |
For which he had given me largess of desire. | |
"In the mid-sea there sits a wasted land," | |
Said he thereafterward, "whose name is Crete, | |
Under whose king the world of old was chaste. | |
There is a mountain there, that once was glad | |
With waters and with leaves, which was called Ida; | |
Now 'tis deserted, as a thing worn out. | |
Rhea once chose it for the faithful cradle | |
Of her own son; and to conceal him better, | |
Whene'er he cried, she there had clamours made. | |
A grand old man stands in the mount erect, | |
Who holds his shoulders turned tow'rds Damietta, | |
And looks at Rome as if it were his mirror. | |
His head is fashioned of refined gold, | |
And of pure silver are the arms and breast; | |
Then he is brass as far down as the fork. | |
From that point downward all is chosen iron, | |
Save that the right foot is of kiln-baked clay, | |
And more he stands on that than on the other. | |
Each part, except the gold, is by a fissure | |
Asunder cleft, that dripping is with tears, | |
Which gathered together perforate that cavern. | |
From rock to rock they fall into this valley; | |
Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon they form; | |
Then downward go along this narrow sluice | |
Unto that point where is no more descending. | |
They form Cocytus; what that pool may be | |
Thou shalt behold, so here 'tis not narrated." | |
And I to him: "If so the present runnel | |
Doth take its rise in this way from our world, | |
Why only on this verge appears it to us?" | |
And he to me: "Thou knowest the place is round, | |
And notwithstanding thou hast journeyed far, | |
Still to the left descending to the bottom, | |
Thou hast not yet through all the circle turned. | |
Therefore if something new appear to us, | |
It should not bring amazement to thy face." | |
And I again: "Master, where shall be found | |
Lethe and Phlegethon, for of one thou'rt silent, | |
And sayest the other of this rain is made?" | |
"In all thy questions truly thou dost please me," | |
Replied he; "but the boiling of the red | |
Water might well solve one of them thou makest. | |
Thou shalt see Lethe, but outside this moat, | |
There where the souls repair to lave themselves, | |
When sin repented of has been removed." | |
Then said he: "It is time now to abandon | |
The wood; take heed that thou come after me; | |
A way the margins make that are not burning, | |
And over them all vapours are extinguished." | |
Inferno: Canto XV | |
Now bears us onward one of the hard margins, | |
And so the brooklet's mist o'ershadows it, | |
From fire it saves the water and the dikes. | |
Even as the Flemings, 'twixt Cadsand and Bruges, | |
Fearing the flood that tow'rds them hurls itself, | |
Their bulwarks build to put the sea to flight; | |
And as the Paduans along the Brenta, | |
To guard their villas and their villages, | |
Or ever Chiarentana feel the heat; | |
In such similitude had those been made, | |
Albeit not so lofty nor so thick, | |
Whoever he might be, the master made them. | |
Now were we from the forest so remote, | |
I could not have discovered where it was, | |
Even if backward I had turned myself, | |
When we a company of souls encountered, | |
Who came beside the dike, and every one | |
Gazed at us, as at evening we are wont | |
To eye each other under a new moon, | |
And so towards us sharpened they their brows | |
As an old tailor at the needle's eye. | |
Thus scrutinised by such a family, | |
By some one I was recognised, who seized | |
My garment's hem, and cried out, "What a marvel!" | |
And I, when he stretched forth his arm to me, | |
On his baked aspect fastened so mine eyes, | |
That the scorched countenance prevented not | |
His recognition by my intellect; | |
And bowing down my face unto his own, | |
I made reply, "Are you here, Ser Brunetto?" | |
And he: "May't not displease thee, O my son, | |
If a brief space with thee Brunetto Latini | |
Backward return and let the trail go on." | |
I said to him: "With all my power I ask it; | |
And if you wish me to sit down with you, | |
I will, if he please, for I go with him." | |
"O son," he said, "whoever of this herd | |
A moment stops, lies then a hundred years, | |
Nor fans himself when smiteth him the fire. | |
Therefore go on; I at thy skirts will come, | |
And afterward will I rejoin my band, | |
Which goes lamenting its eternal doom." | |
I did not dare to go down from the road | |
Level to walk with him; but my head bowed | |
I held as one who goeth reverently. | |
And he began: "What fortune or what fate | |
Before the last day leadeth thee down here? | |
And who is this that showeth thee the way?" | |
"Up there above us in the life serene," | |
I answered him, "I lost me in a valley, | |
Or ever yet my age had been completed. | |
But yestermorn I turned my back upon it; | |
This one appeared to me, returning thither, | |
And homeward leadeth me along this road." | |
And he to me: "If thou thy star do follow, | |
Thou canst not fail thee of a glorious port, | |
If well I judged in the life beautiful. | |
And if I had not died so prematurely, | |
Seeing Heaven thus benignant unto thee, | |
I would have given thee comfort in the work. | |
But that ungrateful and malignant people, | |
Which of old time from Fesole descended, | |
And smacks still of the mountain and the granite, | |
Will make itself, for thy good deeds, thy foe; | |
And it is right; for among crabbed sorbs | |
It ill befits the sweet fig to bear fruit. | |
Old rumour in the world proclaims them blind; | |
A people avaricious, envious, proud; | |
Take heed that of their customs thou do cleanse thee. | |
Thy fortune so much honour doth reserve thee, | |
One party and the other shall be hungry | |
For thee; but far from goat shall be the grass. | |
Their litter let the beasts of Fesole | |
Make of themselves, nor let them touch the plant, | |
If any still upon their dunghill rise, | |
In which may yet revive the consecrated | |
Seed of those Romans, who remained there when | |
The nest of such great malice it became." | |
"If my entreaty wholly were fulfilled," | |
Replied I to him, "not yet would you be | |
In banishment from human nature placed; | |
For in my mind is fixed, and touches now | |
My heart the dear and good paternal image | |
Of you, when in the world from hour to hour | |
You taught me how a man becomes eternal; | |
And how much I am grateful, while I live | |
Behoves that in my language be discerned. | |
What you narrate of my career I write, | |
And keep it to be glossed with other text | |
By a Lady who can do it, if I reach her. | |
This much will I have manifest to you; | |
Provided that my conscience do not chide me, | |
For whatsoever Fortune I am ready. | |
Such handsel is not new unto mine ears; | |
Therefore let Fortune turn her wheel around | |
As it may please her, and the churl his mattock." | |
My Master thereupon on his right cheek | |
Did backward turn himself, and looked at me; | |
Then said: "He listeneth well who noteth it." | |
Nor speaking less on that account, I go | |
With Ser Brunetto, and I ask who are | |
His most known and most eminent companions. | |
And he to me: "To know of some is well; | |
Of others it were laudable to be silent, | |
For short would be the time for so much speech. | |
Know them in sum, that all of them were clerks, | |
And men of letters great and of great fame, | |
In the world tainted with the selfsame sin. | |
Priscian goes yonder with that wretched crowd, | |
And Francis of Accorso; and thou hadst seen there | |
If thou hadst had a hankering for such scurf, | |
That one, who by the Servant of the Servants | |
From Arno was transferred to Bacchiglione, | |
Where he has left his sin-excited nerves. | |
More would I say, but coming and discoursing | |
Can be no longer; for that I behold | |
New smoke uprising yonder from the sand. | |
A people comes with whom I may not be; | |
Commended unto thee be my Tesoro, | |
In which I still live, and no more I ask." | |
Then he turned round, and seemed to be of those | |
Who at Verona run for the Green Mantle | |
Across the plain; and seemed to be among them | |
The one who wins, and not the one who loses. | |
Inferno: Canto XVI | |
Now was I where was heard the reverberation | |
Of water falling into the next round, | |
Like to that humming which the beehives make, | |
When shadows three together started forth, | |
Running, from out a company that passed | |
Beneath the rain of the sharp martyrdom. | |
Towards us came they, and each one cried out: | |
"Stop, thou; for by thy garb to us thou seemest | |
To be some one of our depraved city." | |
Ah me! what wounds I saw upon their limbs, | |
Recent and ancient by the flames burnt in! | |
It pains me still but to remember it. | |
Unto their cries my Teacher paused attentive; | |
He turned his face towards me, and "Now wait," | |
He said; "to these we should be courteous. | |
And if it were not for the fire that darts | |
The nature of this region, I should say | |
That haste were more becoming thee than them." | |
As soon as we stood still, they recommenced | |
The old refrain, and when they overtook us, | |
Formed of themselves a wheel, all three of them. | |
As champions stripped and oiled are wont to do, | |
Watching for their advantage and their hold, | |
Before they come to blows and thrusts between them, | |
Thus, wheeling round, did every one his visage | |
Direct to me, so that in opposite wise | |
His neck and feet continual journey made. | |
And, "If the misery of this soft place | |
Bring in disdain ourselves and our entreaties," | |
Began one, "and our aspect black and blistered, | |
Let the renown of us thy mind incline | |
To tell us who thou art, who thus securely | |
Thy living feet dost move along through Hell. | |
He in whose footprints thou dost see me treading, | |
Naked and skinless though he now may go, | |
Was of a greater rank than thou dost think; | |
He was the grandson of the good Gualdrada; | |
His name was Guidoguerra, and in life | |
Much did he with his wisdom and his sword. | |
The other, who close by me treads the sand, | |
Tegghiaio Aldobrandi is, whose fame | |
Above there in the world should welcome be. | |
And I, who with them on the cross am placed, | |
Jacopo Rusticucci was; and truly | |
My savage wife, more than aught else, doth harm me." | |
Could I have been protected from the fire, | |
Below I should have thrown myself among them, | |
And think the Teacher would have suffered it; | |
But as I should have burned and baked myself, | |
My terror overmastered my good will, | |
Which made me greedy of embracing them. | |
Then I began: "Sorrow and not disdain | |
Did your condition fix within me so, | |
That tardily it wholly is stripped off, | |
As soon as this my Lord said unto me | |
Words, on account of which I thought within me | |
That people such as you are were approaching. | |
I of your city am; and evermore | |
Your labours and your honourable names | |
I with affection have retraced and heard. | |
I leave the gall, and go for the sweet fruits | |
Promised to me by the veracious Leader; | |
But to the centre first I needs must plunge." | |
"So may the soul for a long while conduct | |
Those limbs of thine," did he make answer then, | |
"And so may thy renown shine after thee, | |
Valour and courtesy, say if they dwell | |
Within our city, as they used to do, | |
Or if they wholly have gone out of it; | |
For Guglielmo Borsier, who is in torment | |
With us of late, and goes there with his comrades, | |
Doth greatly mortify us with his words." | |
"The new inhabitants and the sudden gains, | |
Pride and extravagance have in thee engendered, | |
Florence, so that thou weep'st thereat already!" | |
In this wise I exclaimed with face uplifted; | |
And the three, taking that for my reply, | |
Looked at each other, as one looks at truth. | |
"If other times so little it doth cost thee," | |
Replied they all, "to satisfy another, | |
Happy art thou, thus speaking at thy will! | |
Therefore, if thou escape from these dark places, | |
And come to rebehold the beauteous stars, | |
When it shall pleasure thee to say, 'I was,' | |
See that thou speak of us unto the people." | |
Then they broke up the wheel, and in their flight | |
It seemed as if their agile legs were wings. | |
Not an Amen could possibly be said | |
So rapidly as they had disappeared; | |
Wherefore the Master deemed best to depart. | |
I followed him, and little had we gone, | |
Before the sound of water was so near us, | |
That speaking we should hardly have been heard. | |
Even as that stream which holdeth its own course | |
The first from Monte Veso tow'rds the East, | |
Upon the left-hand <DW72> of Apennine, | |
Which is above called Acquacheta, ere | |
It down descendeth into its low bed, | |
And at Forli is vacant of that name, | |
Reverberates there above San Benedetto | |
From Alps, by falling at a single leap, | |
Where for a thousand there were room enough; | |
Thus downward from a bank precipitate, | |
We found resounding that dark-tinted water, | |
So that it soon the ear would have offended. | |
I had a cord around about me girt, | |
And therewithal I whilom had designed | |
To take the panther with the painted skin. | |
After I this had all from me unloosed, | |
As my Conductor had commanded me, | |
I reached it to him, gathered up and coiled, | |
Whereat he turned himself to the right side, | |
And at a little distance from the verge, | |
He cast it down into that deep abyss. | |
"It must needs be some novelty respond," | |
I said within myself, "to the new signal | |
The Master with his eye is following so." | |
Ah me! how very cautious men should be | |
With those who not alone behold the act, | |
But with their wisdom look into the thoughts! | |
He said to me: "Soon there will upward come | |
What I await; and what thy thought is dreaming | |
Must soon reveal itself unto thy sight." | |
Aye to that truth which has the face of falsehood, | |
A man should close his lips as far as may be, | |
Because without his fault it causes shame; | |
But here I cannot; and, Reader, by the notes | |
Of this my Comedy to thee I swear, | |
So may they not be void of lasting favour, | |
Athwart that dense and darksome atmosphere | |
I saw a figure swimming upward come, | |
Marvellous unto every steadfast heart, | |
Even as he returns who goeth down | |
Sometimes to clear an anchor, which has grappled | |
Reef, or aught else that in the sea is hidden, | |
Who upward stretches, and draws in his feet. | |
Inferno: Canto XVII | |
"Behold the monster with the pointed tail, | |
Who cleaves the hills, and breaketh walls and weapons, | |
Behold him who infecteth all the world." | |
Thus unto me my Guide began to say, | |
And beckoned him that he should come to shore, | |
Near to the confine of the trodden marble; | |
And that uncleanly image of deceit | |
Came up and thrust ashore its head and bust, | |
But on the border did not drag its tail. | |
The face was as the face of a just man, | |
Its semblance outwardly was so benign, | |
And of a serpent all the trunk beside. | |
Two paws it had, hairy unto the armpits; | |
The back, and breast, and both the sides it had | |
Depicted o'er with nooses and with shields. | |
With colours more, groundwork or broidery | |
Never in cloth did Tartars make nor Turks, | |
Nor were such tissues by Arachne laid. | |
As sometimes wherries lie upon the shore, | |
That part are in the water, part on land; | |
And as among the guzzling Germans there, | |
The beaver plants himself to wage his war; | |
So that vile monster lay upon the border, | |
Which is of stone, and shutteth in the sand. | |
His tail was wholly quivering in the void, | |
Contorting upwards the envenomed fork, | |
That in the guise of scorpion armed its point. | |
The Guide said: "Now perforce must turn aside | |
Our way a little, even to that beast | |
Malevolent, that yonder coucheth him." | |
We therefore on the right side descended, | |
And made ten steps upon the outer verge, | |
Completely to avoid the sand and flame; | |
And after we are come to him, I see | |
A little farther off upon the sand | |
A people sitting near the hollow place. | |
Then said to me the Master: "So that full | |
Experience of this round thou bear away, | |
Now go and see what their condition is. | |
There let thy conversation be concise; | |
Till thou returnest I will speak with him, | |
That he concede to us his stalwart shoulders." | |
Thus farther still upon the outermost | |
Head of that seventh circle all alone | |
I went, where sat the melancholy folk. | |
Out of their eyes was gushing forth their woe; | |
This way, that way, they helped them with their hands | |
Now from the flames and now from the hot soil. | |
Not otherwise in summer do the dogs, | |
Now with the foot, now with the muzzle, when | |
By fleas, or flies, or gadflies, they are bitten. | |
When I had turned mine eyes upon the faces | |
Of some, on whom the dolorous fire is falling, | |
Not one of them I knew; but I perceived | |
That from the neck of each there hung a pouch, | |
Which certain colour had, and certain blazon; | |
And thereupon it seems their eyes are feeding. | |
And as I gazing round me come among them, | |
Upon a yellow pouch I azure saw | |
That had the face and posture of a lion. | |
Proceeding then the current of my sight, | |
Another of them saw I, red as blood, | |
Display a goose more white than butter is. | |
And one, who with an azure sow and gravid | |
Emblazoned had his little pouch of white, | |
Said unto me: "What dost thou in this moat? | |
Now get thee gone; and since thou'rt still alive, | |
Know that a neighbour of mine, Vitaliano, | |
Will have his seat here on my left-hand side. | |
A Paduan am I with these Florentines; | |
Full many a time they thunder in mine ears, | |
Exclaiming, 'Come the sovereign cavalier, | |
He who shall bring the satchel with three goats;'" | |
Then twisted he his mouth, and forth he thrust | |
His tongue, like to an ox that licks its nose. | |
And fearing lest my longer stay might vex | |
Him who had warned me not to tarry long, | |
Backward I turned me from those weary souls. | |
I found my Guide, who had already mounted | |
Upon the back of that wild animal, | |
And said to me: "Now be both strong and bold. | |
Now we descend by stairways such as these; | |
Mount thou in front, for I will be midway, | |
So that the tail may have no power to harm thee." | |
Such as he is who has so near the ague | |
Of quartan that his nails are blue already, | |
And trembles all, but looking at the shade; | |
Even such became I at those proffered words; | |
But shame in me his menaces produced, | |
Which maketh servant strong before good master. | |
I seated me upon those monstrous shoulders; | |
I wished to say, and yet the voice came not | |
As I believed, "Take heed that thou embrace me." | |
But he, who other times had rescued me | |
In other peril, soon as I had mounted, | |
Within his arms encircled and sustained me, | |
And said: "Now, Geryon, bestir thyself; | |
The circles large, and the descent be little; | |
Think of the novel burden which thou hast." | |
Even as the little vessel shoves from shore, | |
Backward, still backward, so he thence withdrew; | |
And when he wholly felt himself afloat, | |
There where his breast had been he turned his tail, | |
And that extended like an eel he moved, | |
And with his paws drew to himself the air. | |
A greater fear I do not think there was | |
What time abandoned Phaeton the reins, | |
Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched; | |
Nor when the wretched Icarus his flanks | |
Felt stripped of feathers by the melting wax, | |
His father crying, "An ill way thou takest!" | |
Than was my own, when I perceived myself | |
On all sides in the air, and saw extinguished | |
The sight of everything but of the monster. | |
Onward he goeth, swimming slowly, slowly; | |
Wheels and descends, but I perceive it only | |
By wind upon my face and from below. | |
I heard already on the right the whirlpool | |
Making a horrible crashing under us; | |
Whence I thrust out my head with eyes cast downward. | |
Then was I still more fearful of the abyss; | |
Because I fires beheld, and heard laments, | |
Whereat I, trembling, all the closer cling. | |
I saw then, for before I had not seen it, | |
The turning and descending, by great horrors | |
That were approaching upon divers sides. | |
As falcon who has long been on the wing, | |
Who, without seeing either lure or bird, | |
Maketh the falconer say, "Ah me, thou stoopest," | |
Descendeth weary, whence he started swiftly, | |
Thorough a hundred circles, and alights | |
Far from his master, sullen and disdainful; | |
Even thus did Geryon place us on the bottom, | |
Close to the bases of the rough-hewn rock, | |
And being disencumbered of our persons, | |
He sped away as arrow from the string. | |
Inferno: Canto XVIII | |
There is a place in Hell called Malebolge, | |
Wholly of stone and of an iron colour, | |
As is the circle that around it turns. | |
Right in the middle of the field malign | |
There yawns a well exceeding wide and deep, | |
Of which its place the structure will recount. | |
Round, then, is that enclosure which remains | |
Between the well and foot of the high, hard bank, | |
And has distinct in valleys ten its bottom. | |
As where for the protection of the walls | |
Many and many moats surround the castles, | |
The part in which they are a figure forms, | |
Just such an image those presented there; | |
And as about such strongholds from their gates | |
Unto the outer bank are little bridges, | |
So from the precipice's base did crags | |
Project, which intersected dikes and moats, | |
Unto the well that truncates and collects them. | |
Within this place, down shaken from the back | |
Of Geryon, we found us; and the Poet | |
Held to the left, and I moved on behind. | |
Upon my right hand I beheld new anguish, | |
New torments, and new wielders of the lash, | |
Wherewith the foremost Bolgia was replete. | |
Down at the bottom were the sinners naked; | |
This side the middle came they facing us, | |
Beyond it, with us, but with greater steps; | |
Even as the Romans, for the mighty host, | |
The year of Jubilee, upon the bridge, | |
Have chosen a mode to pass the people over; | |
For all upon one side towards the Castle | |
Their faces have, and go unto St. Peter's; | |
On the other side they go towards the Mountain. | |
This side and that, along the livid stone | |
Beheld I horned demons with great scourges, | |
Who cruelly were beating them behind. | |
Ah me! how they did make them lift their legs | |
At the first blows! and sooth not any one | |
The second waited for, nor for the third. | |
While I was going on, mine eyes by one | |
Encountered were; and straight I said: "Already | |
With sight of this one I am not unfed." | |
Therefore I stayed my feet to make him out, | |
And with me the sweet Guide came to a stand, | |
And to my going somewhat back assented; | |
And he, the scourged one, thought to hide himself, | |
Lowering his face, but little it availed him; | |
For said I: "Thou that castest down thine eyes, | |
If false are not the features which thou bearest, | |
Thou art Venedico Caccianimico; | |
But what doth bring thee to such pungent sauces?" | |
And he to me: "Unwillingly I tell it; | |
But forces me thine utterance distinct, | |
Which makes me recollect the ancient world. | |
I was the one who the fair Ghisola | |
Induced to grant the wishes of the Marquis, | |
Howe'er the shameless story may be told. | |
Not the sole Bolognese am I who weeps here; | |
Nay, rather is this place so full of them, | |
That not so many tongues to-day are taught | |
'Twixt Reno and Savena to say 'sipa;' | |
And if thereof thou wishest pledge or proof, | |
Bring to thy mind our avaricious heart." | |
While speaking in this manner, with his scourge | |
A demon smote him, and said: "Get thee gone | |
Pander, there are no women here for coin." | |
I joined myself again unto mine Escort; | |
Thereafterward with footsteps few we came | |
To where a crag projected from the bank. | |
This very easily did we ascend, | |
And turning to the right along its ridge, | |
From those eternal circles we departed. | |
When we were there, where it is hollowed out | |
Beneath, to give a passage to the scourged, | |
The Guide said: "Wait, and see that on thee strike | |
The vision of those others evil-born, | |
Of whom thou hast not yet beheld the faces, | |
Because together with us they have gone." | |
From the old bridge we looked upon the train | |
Which tow'rds us came upon the other border, | |
And which the scourges in like manner smite. | |
And the good Master, without my inquiring, | |
Said to me: "See that tall one who is coming, | |
And for his pain seems not to shed a tear; | |
Still what a royal aspect he retains! | |
That Jason is, who by his heart and cunning | |
The Colchians of the Ram made destitute. | |
He by the isle of Lemnos passed along | |
After the daring women pitiless | |
Had unto death devoted all their males. | |
There with his tokens and with ornate words | |
Did he deceive Hypsipyle, the maiden | |
Who first, herself, had all the rest deceived. | |
There did he leave her pregnant and forlorn; | |
Such sin unto such punishment condemns him, | |
And also for Medea is vengeance done. | |
With him go those who in such wise deceive; | |
And this sufficient be of the first valley | |
To know, and those that in its jaws it holds." | |
We were already where the narrow path | |
Crosses athwart the second dike, and forms | |
Of that a buttress for another arch. | |
Thence we heard people, who are making moan | |
In the next Bolgia, snorting with their muzzles, | |
And with their palms beating upon themselves | |
The margins were incrusted with a mould | |
By exhalation from below, that sticks there, | |
And with the eyes and nostrils wages war. | |
The bottom is so deep, no place suffices | |
To give us sight of it, without ascending | |
The arch's back, where most the crag impends. | |
Thither we came, and thence down in the moat | |
I saw a people smothered in a filth | |
That out of human privies seemed to flow; | |
And whilst below there with mine eye I search, | |
I saw one with his head so foul with ordure, | |
It was not clear if he were clerk or layman. | |
He screamed to me: "Wherefore art thou so eager | |
To look at me more than the other foul ones?" | |
And I to him: "Because, if I remember, | |
I have already seen thee with dry hair, | |
And thou'rt Alessio Interminei of Lucca; | |
Therefore I eye thee more than all the others." | |
And he thereon, belabouring his pumpkin: | |
"The flatteries have submerged me here below, | |
Wherewith my tongue was never surfeited." | |
Then said to me the Guide: "See that thou thrust | |
Thy visage somewhat farther in advance, | |
That with thine eyes thou well the face attain | |
Of that uncleanly and dishevelled drab, | |
Who there doth scratch herself with filthy nails, | |
And crouches now, and now on foot is standing. | |
Thais the harlot is it, who replied | |
Unto her paramour, when he said, 'Have I | |
Great gratitude from thee?'--'Nay, marvellous;' | |
And herewith let our sight be satisfied." | |
Inferno: Canto XIX | |
O Simon Magus, O forlorn disciples, | |
Ye who the things of God, which ought to be | |
The brides of holiness, rapaciously | |
For silver and for gold do prostitute, | |
Now it behoves for you the trumpet sound, | |
Because in this third Bolgia ye abide. | |
We had already on the following tomb | |
Ascended to that portion of the crag | |
Which o'er the middle of the moat hangs plumb. | |
Wisdom supreme, O how great art thou showest | |
In heaven, in earth, and in the evil world, | |
And with what justice doth thy power distribute! | |
I saw upon the sides and on the bottom | |
The livid stone with perforations filled, | |
All of one size, and every one was round. | |
To me less ample seemed they not, nor greater | |
Than those that in my beautiful Saint John | |
Are fashioned for the place of the baptisers, | |
And one of which, not many years ago, | |
I broke for some one, who was drowning in it; | |
Be this a seal all men to undeceive. | |
Out of the mouth of each one there protruded | |
The feet of a transgressor, and the legs | |
Up to the calf, the rest within remained. | |
In all of them the soles were both on fire; | |
Wherefore the joints so violently quivered, | |
They would have snapped asunder withes and bands. | |
Even as the flame of unctuous things is wont | |
To move upon the outer surface only, | |
So likewise was it there from heel to point. | |
"Master, who is that one who writhes himself, | |
More than his other comrades quivering," | |
I said, "and whom a redder flame is sucking?" | |
And he to me: "If thou wilt have me bear thee | |
Down there along that bank which lowest lies, | |
From him thou'lt know his errors and himself." | |
And I: "What pleases thee, to me is pleasing; | |
Thou art my Lord, and knowest that I depart not | |
From thy desire, and knowest what is not spoken." | |
Straightway upon the fourth dike we arrived; | |
We turned, and on the left-hand side descended | |
Down to the bottom full of holes and narrow. | |
And the good Master yet from off his haunch | |
Deposed me not, till to the hole he brought me | |
Of him who so lamented with his shanks. | |
"Whoe'er thou art, that standest upside down, | |
O doleful soul, implanted like a stake," | |
To say began I, "if thou canst, speak out." | |
I stood even as the friar who is confessing | |
The false assassin, who, when he is fixed, | |
Recalls him, so that death may be delayed. | |
And he cried out: "Dost thou stand there already, | |
Dost thou stand there already, Boniface? | |
By many years the record lied to me. | |
Art thou so early satiate with that wealth, | |
For which thou didst not fear to take by fraud | |
The beautiful Lady, and then work her woe?" | |
Such I became, as people are who stand, | |
Not comprehending what is answered them, | |
As if bemocked, and know not how to answer. | |
Then said Virgilius: "Say to him straightway, | |
'I am not he, I am not he thou thinkest.'" | |
And I replied as was imposed on me. | |
Whereat the spirit writhed with both his feet, | |
Then, sighing, with a voice of lamentation | |
Said to me: "Then what wantest thou of me? | |
If who I am thou carest so much to know, | |
That thou on that account hast crossed the bank, | |
Know that I vested was with the great mantle; | |
And truly was I son of the She-bear, | |
So eager to advance the cubs, that wealth | |
Above, and here myself, I pocketed. | |
Beneath my head the others are dragged down | |
Who have preceded me in simony, | |
Flattened along the fissure of the rock. | |
Below there I shall likewise fall, whenever | |
That one shall come who I believed thou wast, | |
What time the sudden question I proposed. | |
But longer I my feet already toast, | |
And here have been in this way upside down, | |
Than he will planted stay with reddened feet; | |
For after him shall come of fouler deed | |
From tow'rds the west a Pastor without law, | |
Such as befits to cover him and me. | |
New Jason will he be, of whom we read | |
In Maccabees; and as his king was pliant, | |
So he who governs France shall be to this one." | |
I do not know if I were here too bold, | |
That him I answered only in this metre: | |
"I pray thee tell me now how great a treasure | |
Our Lord demanded of Saint Peter first, | |
Before he put the keys into his keeping? | |
Truly he nothing asked but 'Follow me.' | |
Nor Peter nor the rest asked of Matthias | |
Silver or gold, when he by lot was chosen | |
Unto the place the guilty soul had lost. | |
Therefore stay here, for thou art justly punished, | |
And keep safe guard o'er the ill-gotten money, | |
Which caused thee to be valiant against Charles. | |
And were it not that still forbids it me | |
The reverence for the keys superlative | |
Thou hadst in keeping in the gladsome life, | |
I would make use of words more grievous still; | |
Because your avarice afflicts the world, | |
Trampling the good and lifting the depraved. | |
The Evangelist you Pastors had in mind, | |
When she who sitteth upon many waters | |
To fornicate with kings by him was seen; | |
The same who with the seven heads was born, | |
And power and strength from the ten horns received, | |
So long as virtue to her spouse was pleasing. | |
Ye have made yourselves a god of gold and silver; | |
And from the idolater how differ ye, | |
Save that he one, and ye a hundred worship? | |
Ah, Constantine! of how much ill was mother, | |
Not thy conversion, but that marriage dower | |
Which the first wealthy Father took from thee!" | |
And while I sang to him such notes as these, | |
Either that anger or that conscience stung him, | |
He struggled violently with both his feet. | |
I think in sooth that it my Leader pleased, | |
With such contented lip he listened ever | |
Unto the sound of the true words expressed. | |
Therefore with both his arms he took me up, | |
And when he had me all upon his breast, | |
Remounted by the way where he descended. | |
Nor did he tire to have me clasped to him; | |
But bore me to the summit of the arch | |
Which from the fourth dike to the fifth is passage. | |
There tenderly he laid his burden down, | |
Tenderly on the crag uneven and steep, | |
That would have been hard passage for the goats: | |
Thence was unveiled to me another valley. | |
Inferno: Canto XX | |
Of a new pain behoves me to make verses | |
And give material to the twentieth canto | |
Of the first song, which is of the submerged. | |
I was already thoroughly disposed | |
To peer down into the uncovered depth, | |
Which bathed itself with tears of agony; | |
And people saw I through the circular valley, | |
Silent and weeping, coming at the pace | |
Which in this world the Litanies assume. | |
As lower down my sight descended on them, | |
Wondrously each one seemed to be distorted | |
From chin to the beginning of the chest; | |
For tow'rds the reins the countenance was turned, | |
And backward it behoved them to advance, | |
As to look forward had been taken from them. | |
Perchance indeed by violence of palsy | |
Some one has been thus wholly turned awry; | |
But I ne'er saw it, nor believe it can be. | |
As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit | |
From this thy reading, think now for thyself | |
How I could ever keep my face unmoistened, | |
When our own image near me I beheld | |
Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes | |
Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts. | |
Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak | |
Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said | |
To me: "Art thou, too, of the other fools? | |
Here pity lives when it is wholly dead; | |
Who is a greater reprobate than he | |
Who feels compassion at the doom divine? | |
Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom | |
Opened the earth before the Thebans' eyes; | |
Wherefore they all cried: 'Whither rushest thou, | |
Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?' | |
And downward ceased he not to fall amain | |
As far as Minos, who lays hold on all. | |
See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders! | |
Because he wished to see too far before him | |
Behind he looks, and backward goes his way: | |
Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed, | |
When from a male a female he became, | |
His members being all of them transformed; | |
And afterwards was forced to strike once more | |
The two entangled serpents with his rod, | |
Ere he could have again his manly plumes. | |
That Aruns is, who backs the other's belly, | |
Who in the hills of Luni, there where grubs | |
The Carrarese who houses underneath, | |
Among the marbles white a cavern had | |
For his abode; whence to behold the stars | |
And sea, the view was not cut off from him. | |
And she there, who is covering up her breasts, | |
Which thou beholdest not, with loosened tresses, | |
And on that side has all the hairy skin, | |
Was Manto, who made quest through many lands, | |
Afterwards tarried there where I was born; | |
Whereof I would thou list to me a little. | |
After her father had from life departed, | |
And the city of Bacchus had become enslaved, | |
She a long season wandered through the world. | |
Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake | |
At the Alp's foot that shuts in Germany | |
Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco. | |
By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed, | |
'Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino, | |
With water that grows stagnant in that lake. | |
Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor, | |
And he of Brescia, and the Veronese | |
Might give his blessing, if he passed that way. | |
Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong, | |
To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks, | |
Where round about the bank descendeth lowest. | |
There of necessity must fall whatever | |
In bosom of Benaco cannot stay, | |
And grows a river down through verdant pastures. | |
Soon as the water doth begin to run, | |
No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio, | |
Far as Governo, where it falls in Po. | |
Not far it runs before it finds a plain | |
In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy, | |
And oft 'tis wont in summer to be sickly. | |
Passing that way the virgin pitiless | |
Land in the middle of the fen descried, | |
Untilled and naked of inhabitants; | |
There to escape all human intercourse, | |
She with her servants stayed, her arts to practise | |
And lived, and left her empty body there. | |
The men, thereafter, who were scattered round, | |
Collected in that place, which was made strong | |
By the lagoon it had on every side; | |
They built their city over those dead bones, | |
And, after her who first the place selected, | |
Mantua named it, without other omen. | |
Its people once within more crowded were, | |
Ere the stupidity of Casalodi | |
From Pinamonte had received deceit. | |
Therefore I caution thee, if e'er thou hearest | |
Originate my city otherwise, | |
No falsehood may the verity defraud." | |
And I: "My Master, thy discourses are | |
To me so certain, and so take my faith, | |
That unto me the rest would be spent coals. | |
But tell me of the people who are passing, | |
If any one note-worthy thou beholdest, | |
For only unto that my mind reverts." | |
Then said he to me: "He who from the cheek | |
Thrusts out his beard upon his swarthy shoulders | |
Was, at the time when Greece was void of males, | |
So that there scarce remained one in the cradle, | |
An augur, and with Calchas gave the moment, | |
In Aulis, when to sever the first cable. | |
Eryphylus his name was, and so sings | |
My lofty Tragedy in some part or other; | |
That knowest thou well, who knowest the whole of it. | |
The next, who is so slender in the flanks, | |
Was Michael Scott, who of a verity | |
Of magical illusions knew the game. | |
Behold Guido Bonatti, behold Asdente, | |
Who now unto his leather and his thread | |
Would fain have stuck, but he too late repents. | |
Behold the wretched ones, who left the needle, | |
The spool and rock, and made them fortune-tellers; | |
They wrought their magic spells with herb and image. | |
But come now, for already holds the confines | |
Of both the hemispheres, and under Seville | |
Touches the ocean-wave, Cain and the thorns, | |
And yesternight the moon was round already; | |
Thou shouldst remember well it did not harm thee | |
From time to time within the forest deep." | |
Thus spake he to me, and we walked the while. | |
Inferno: Canto XXI | |
From bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things | |
Of which my Comedy cares not to sing, | |
We came along, and held the summit, when | |
We halted to behold another fissure | |
Of Malebolge and other vain laments; | |
And I beheld it marvellously dark. | |
As in the Arsenal of the Venetians | |
Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch | |
To smear their unsound vessels o'er again, | |
For sail they cannot; and instead thereof | |
One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks | |
The ribs of that which many a voyage has made; | |
One hammers at the prow, one at the stern, | |
This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists, | |
Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen; | |
Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine, | |
Was boiling down below there a dense pitch | |
Which upon every side the bank belimed. | |
I saw it, but I did not see within it | |
Aught but the bubbles that the boiling raised, | |
And all swell up and resubside compressed. | |
The while below there fixedly I gazed, | |
My Leader, crying out: "Beware, beware!" | |
Drew me unto himself from where I stood. | |
Then I turned round, as one who is impatient | |
To see what it behoves him to escape, | |
And whom a sudden terror doth unman, | |
Who, while he looks, delays not his departure; | |
And I beheld behind us a black devil, | |
Running along upon the crag, approach. | |
Ah, how ferocious was he in his aspect! | |
And how he seemed to me in action ruthless, | |
With open wings and light upon his feet! | |
His shoulders, which sharp-pointed were and high, | |
A sinner did encumber with both haunches, | |
And he held clutched the sinews of the feet. | |
From off our bridge, he said: "O Malebranche, | |
Behold one of the elders of Saint Zita; | |
Plunge him beneath, for I return for others | |
Unto that town, which is well furnished with them. | |
All there are barrators, except Bonturo; | |
No into Yes for money there is changed." | |
He hurled him down, and over the hard crag | |
Turned round, and never was a mastiff loosened | |
In so much hurry to pursue a thief. | |
The other sank, and rose again face downward; | |
But the demons, under cover of the bridge, | |
Cried: "Here the Santo Volto has no place! | |
Here swims one otherwise than in the Serchio; | |
Therefore, if for our gaffs thou wishest not, | |
Do not uplift thyself above the pitch." | |
They seized him then with more than a hundred rakes; | |
They said: "It here behoves thee to dance covered, | |
That, if thou canst, thou secretly mayest pilfer." | |
Not otherwise the cooks their scullions make | |
Immerse into the middle of the caldron | |
The meat with hooks, so that it may not float. | |
Said the good Master to me: "That it be not | |
Apparent thou art here, crouch thyself down | |
Behind a jag, that thou mayest have some screen; | |
And for no outrage that is done to me | |
Be thou afraid, because these things I know, | |
For once before was I in such a scuffle." | |
Then he passed on beyond the bridge's head, | |
And as upon the sixth bank he arrived, | |
Need was for him to have a steadfast front. | |
With the same fury, and the same uproar, | |
As dogs leap out upon a mendicant, | |
Who on a sudden begs, where'er he stops, | |
They issued from beneath the little bridge, | |
And turned against him all their grappling-irons; | |
But he cried out: "Be none of you malignant! | |
Before those hooks of yours lay hold of me, | |
Let one of you step forward, who may hear me, | |
And then take counsel as to grappling me." | |
They all cried out: "Let Malacoda go;" | |
Whereat one started, and the rest stood still, | |
And he came to him, saying: "What avails it?" | |
"Thinkest thou, Malacoda, to behold me | |
Advanced into this place," my Master said, | |
"Safe hitherto from all your skill of fence, | |
Without the will divine, and fate auspicious? | |
Let me go on, for it in Heaven is willed | |
That I another show this savage road." | |
Then was his arrogance so humbled in him, | |
That he let fall his grapnel at his feet, | |
And to the others said: "Now strike him not." | |
And unto me my Guide: "O thou, who sittest | |
Among the splinters of the bridge crouched down, | |
Securely now return to me again." | |
Wherefore I started and came swiftly to him; | |
And all the devils forward thrust themselves, | |
So that I feared they would not keep their compact. | |
And thus beheld I once afraid the soldiers | |
Who issued under safeguard from Caprona, | |
Seeing themselves among so many foes. | |
Close did I press myself with all my person | |
Beside my Leader, and turned not mine eyes | |
From off their countenance, which was not good. | |
They lowered their rakes, and "Wilt thou have me hit him," | |
They said to one another, "on the rump?" | |
And answered: "Yes; see that thou nick him with it." | |
But the same demon who was holding parley | |
With my Conductor turned him very quickly, | |
And said: "Be quiet, be quiet, Scarmiglione;" | |
Then said to us: "You can no farther go | |
Forward upon this crag, because is lying | |
All shattered, at the bottom, the sixth arch. | |
And if it still doth please you to go onward, | |
Pursue your way along upon this rock; | |
Near is another crag that yields a path. | |
Yesterday, five hours later than this hour, | |
One thousand and two hundred sixty-six | |
Years were complete, that here the way was broken. | |
I send in that direction some of mine | |
To see if any one doth air himself; | |
Go ye with them; for they will not be vicious. | |
Step forward, Alichino and Calcabrina," | |
Began he to cry out, "and thou, Cagnazzo; | |
And Barbariccia, do thou guide the ten. | |
Come forward, Libicocco and Draghignazzo, | |
And tusked Ciriatto and Graffiacane, | |
And Farfarello and mad Rubicante; | |
Search ye all round about the boiling pitch; | |
Let these be safe as far as the next crag, | |
That all unbroken passes o'er the dens." | |
"O me! what is it, Master, that I see? | |
Pray let us go," I said, "without an escort, | |
If thou knowest how, since for myself I ask none. | |
If thou art as observant as thy wont is, | |
Dost thou not see that they do gnash their teeth, | |
And with their brows are threatening woe to us?" | |
And he to me: "I will not have thee fear; | |
Let them gnash on, according to their fancy, | |
Because they do it for those boiling wretches." | |
Along the left-hand dike they wheeled about; | |
But first had each one thrust his tongue between | |
His teeth towards their leader for a signal; | |
And he had made a trumpet of his rump. | |
Inferno: Canto XXII | |
I have erewhile seen horsemen moving camp, | |
Begin the storming, and their muster make, | |
And sometimes starting off for their escape; | |
Vaunt-couriers have I seen upon your land, | |
O Aretines, and foragers go forth, | |
Tournaments stricken, and the joustings run, | |
Sometimes with trumpets and sometimes with bells, | |
With kettle-drums, and signals of the castles, | |
And with our own, and with outlandish things, | |
But never yet with bagpipe so uncouth | |
Did I see horsemen move, nor infantry, | |
Nor ship by any sign of land or star. | |
We went upon our way with the ten demons; | |
Ah, savage company! but in the church | |
With saints, and in the tavern with the gluttons! | |
Ever upon the pitch was my intent, | |
To see the whole condition of that Bolgia, | |
And of the people who therein were burned. | |
Even as the dolphins, when they make a sign | |
To mariners by arching of the back, | |
That they should counsel take to save their vessel, | |
Thus sometimes, to alleviate his pain, | |
One of the sinners would display his back, | |
And in less time conceal it than it lightens. | |
As on the brink of water in a ditch | |
The frogs stand only with their muzzles out, | |
So that they hide their feet and other bulk, | |
So upon every side the sinners stood; | |
But ever as Barbariccia near them came, | |
Thus underneath the boiling they withdrew. | |
I saw, and still my heart doth shudder at it, | |
One waiting thus, even as it comes to pass | |
One frog remains, and down another dives; | |
And Graffiacan, who most confronted him, | |
Grappled him by his tresses smeared with pitch, | |
And drew him up, so that he seemed an otter. | |
I knew, before, the names of all of them, | |
So had I noted them when they were chosen, | |
And when they called each other, listened how. | |
"O Rubicante, see that thou do lay | |
Thy claws upon him, so that thou mayst flay him," | |
Cried all together the accursed ones. | |
And I: "My Master, see to it, if thou canst, | |
That thou mayst know who is the luckless wight, | |
Thus come into his adversaries' hands." | |
Near to the side of him my Leader drew, | |
Asked of him whence he was; and he replied: | |
"I in the kingdom of Navarre was born; | |
My mother placed me servant to a lord, | |
For she had borne me to a ribald knave, | |
Destroyer of himself and of his things. | |
Then I domestic was of good King Thibault; | |
I set me there to practise barratry, | |
For which I pay the reckoning in this heat." | |
And Ciriatto, from whose mouth projected, | |
On either side, a tusk, as in a boar, | |
Caused him to feel how one of them could rip. | |
Among malicious cats the mouse had come; | |
But Barbariccia clasped him in his arms, | |
And said: "Stand ye aside, while I enfork him." | |
And to my Master he turned round his head; | |
"Ask him again," he said, "if more thou wish | |
To know from him, before some one destroy him." | |
The Guide: "Now tell then of the other culprits; | |
Knowest thou any one who is a Latian, | |
Under the pitch?" And he: "I separated | |
Lately from one who was a neighbour to it; | |
Would that I still were covered up with him, | |
For I should fear not either claw nor hook!" | |
And Libicocco: "We have borne too much;" | |
And with his grapnel seized him by the arm, | |
So that, by rending, he tore off a tendon. | |
Eke Draghignazzo wished to pounce upon him | |
Down at the legs; whence their Decurion | |
Turned round and round about with evil look. | |
When they again somewhat were pacified, | |
Of him, who still was looking at his wound, | |
Demanded my Conductor without stay: | |
"Who was that one, from whom a luckless parting | |
Thou sayest thou hast made, to come ashore?" | |
And he replied: "It was the Friar Gomita, | |
He of Gallura, vessel of all fraud, | |
Who had the enemies of his Lord in hand, | |
And dealt so with them each exults thereat; | |
Money he took, and let them smoothly off, | |
As he says; and in other offices | |
A barrator was he, not mean but sovereign. | |
Foregathers with him one Don Michael Zanche | |
Of Logodoro; and of Sardinia | |
To gossip never do their tongues feel tired. | |
O me! see that one, how he grinds his teeth; | |
Still farther would I speak, but am afraid | |
Lest he to scratch my itch be making ready." | |
And the grand Provost, turned to Farfarello, | |
Who rolled his eyes about as if to strike, | |
Said: "Stand aside there, thou malicious bird." | |
"If you desire either to see or hear," | |
The terror-stricken recommenced thereon, | |
"Tuscans or Lombards, I will make them come. | |
But let the Malebranche cease a little, | |
So that these may not their revenges fear, | |
And I, down sitting in this very place, | |
For one that I am will make seven come, | |
When I shall whistle, as our custom is | |
To do whenever one of us comes out." | |
Cagnazzo at these words his muzzle lifted, | |
Shaking his head, and said: "Just hear the trick | |
Which he has thought of, down to throw himself!" | |
Whence he, who snares in great abundance had, | |
Responded: "I by far too cunning am, | |
When I procure for mine a greater sadness." | |
Alichin held not in, but running counter | |
Unto the rest, said to him: "If thou dive, | |
I will not follow thee upon the gallop, | |
But I will beat my wings above the pitch; | |
The height be left, and be the bank a shield | |
To see if thou alone dost countervail us." | |
O thou who readest, thou shalt hear new sport! | |
Each to the other side his eyes averted; | |
He first, who most reluctant was to do it. | |
The Navarrese selected well his time; | |
Planted his feet on land, and in a moment | |
Leaped, and released himself from their design. | |
Whereat each one was suddenly stung with shame, | |
But he most who was cause of the defeat; | |
Therefore he moved, and cried: "Thou art o'ertakern." | |
But little it availed, for wings could not | |
Outstrip the fear; the other one went under, | |
And, flying, upward he his breast directed; | |
Not otherwise the duck upon a sudden | |
Dives under, when the falcon is approaching, | |
And upward he returneth cross and weary. | |
Infuriate at the mockery, Calcabrina | |
Flying behind him followed close, desirous | |
The other should escape, to have a quarrel. | |
And when the barrator had disappeared, | |
He turned his talons upon his companion, | |
And grappled with him right above the moat. | |
But sooth the other was a doughty sparhawk | |
To clapperclaw him well; and both of them | |
Fell in the middle of the boiling pond. | |
A sudden intercessor was the heat; | |
But ne'ertheless of rising there was naught, | |
To such degree they had their wings belimed. | |
Lamenting with the others, Barbariccia | |
Made four of them fly to the other side | |
With all their gaffs, and very speedily | |
This side and that they to their posts descended; | |
They stretched their hooks towards the pitch-ensnared, | |
Who were already baked within the crust, | |
And in this manner busied did we leave them. | |
Inferno: Canto XXIII | |
Silent, alone, and without company | |
We went, the one in front, the other after, | |
As go the Minor Friars along their way. | |
Upon the fable of Aesop was directed | |
My thought, by reason of the present quarrel, | |
Where he has spoken of the frog and mouse; | |
For 'mo' and 'issa' are not more alike | |
Than this one is to that, if well we couple | |
End and beginning with a steadfast mind. | |
And even as one thought from another springs, | |
So afterward from that was born another, | |
Which the first fear within me double made. | |
Thus did I ponder: "These on our account | |
Are laughed to scorn, with injury and scoff | |
So great, that much I think it must annoy them. | |
If anger be engrafted on ill-will, | |
They will come after us more merciless | |
Than dog upon the leveret which he seizes," | |
I felt my hair stand all on end already | |
With terror, and stood backwardly intent, | |
When said I: "Master, if thou hidest not | |
Thyself and me forthwith, of Malebranche | |
I am in dread; we have them now behind us; | |
I so imagine them, I already feel them." | |
And he: "If I were made of leaded glass, | |
Thine outward image I should not attract | |
Sooner to me than I imprint the inner. | |
Just now thy thoughts came in among my own, | |
With similar attitude and similar face, | |
So that of both one counsel sole I made. | |
If peradventure the right bank so <DW72> | |
That we to the next Bolgia can descend, | |
We shall escape from the imagined chase." | |
Not yet he finished rendering such opinion, | |
When I beheld them come with outstretched wings, | |
Not far remote, with will to seize upon us. | |
My Leader on a sudden seized me up, | |
Even as a mother who by noise is wakened, | |
And close beside her sees the enkindled flames, | |
Who takes her son, and flies, and does not stop, | |
Having more care of him than of herself, | |
So that she clothes her only with a shift; | |
And downward from the top of the hard bank | |
Supine he gave him to the pendent rock, | |
That one side of the other Bolgia walls. | |
Ne'er ran so swiftly water through a sluice | |
To turn the wheel of any land-built mill, | |
When nearest to the paddles it approaches, | |
As did my Master down along that border, | |
Bearing me with him on his breast away, | |
As his own son, and not as a companion. | |
Hardly the bed of the ravine below | |
His feet had reached, ere they had reached the hill | |
Right over us; but he was not afraid; | |
For the high Providence, which had ordained | |
To place them ministers of the fifth moat, | |
The power of thence departing took from all. | |
A painted people there below we found, | |
Who went about with footsteps very slow, | |
Weeping and in their semblance tired and vanquished. | |
They had on mantles with the hoods low down | |
Before their eyes, and fashioned of the cut | |
That in Cologne they for the monks are made. | |
Without, they gilded are so that it dazzles; | |
But inwardly all leaden and so heavy | |
That Frederick used to put them on of straw. | |
O everlastingly fatiguing mantle! | |
Again we turned us, still to the left hand | |
Along with them, intent on their sad plaint; | |
But owing to the weight, that weary folk | |
Came on so tardily, that we were new | |
In company at each motion of the haunch. | |
Whence I unto my Leader: "See thou find | |
Some one who may by deed or name be known, | |
And thus in going move thine eye about." | |
And one, who understood the Tuscan speech, | |
Cried to us from behind: "Stay ye your feet, | |
Ye, who so run athwart the dusky air! | |
Perhaps thou'lt have from me what thou demandest." | |
Whereat the Leader turned him, and said: "Wait, | |
And then according to his pace proceed." | |
I stopped, and two beheld I show great haste | |
Of spirit, in their faces, to be with me; | |
But the burden and the narrow way delayed them. | |
When they came up, long with an eye askance | |
They scanned me without uttering a word. | |
Then to each other turned, and said together: | |
"He by the action of his throat seems living; | |
And if they dead are, by what privilege | |
Go they uncovered by the heavy stole?" | |
Then said to me: "Tuscan, who to the college | |
Of miserable hypocrites art come, | |
Do not disdain to tell us who thou art." | |
And I to them: "Born was I, and grew up | |
In the great town on the fair river of Arno, | |
And with the body am I've always had. | |
But who are ye, in whom there trickles down | |
Along your cheeks such grief as I behold? | |
And what pain is upon you, that so sparkles?" | |
And one replied to me: "These orange cloaks | |
Are made of lead so heavy, that the weights | |
Cause in this way their balances to creak. | |
Frati Gaudenti were we, and Bolognese; | |
I Catalano, and he Loderingo | |
Named, and together taken by thy city, | |
As the wont is to take one man alone, | |
For maintenance of its peace; and we were such | |
That still it is apparent round Gardingo." | |
"O Friars," began I, "your iniquitous. . ." | |
But said no more; for to mine eyes there rushed | |
One crucified with three stakes on the ground. | |
When me he saw, he writhed himself all over, | |
Blowing into his beard with suspirations; | |
And the Friar Catalan, who noticed this, | |
Said to me: "This transfixed one, whom thou seest, | |
Counselled the Pharisees that it was meet | |
To put one man to torture for the people. | |
Crosswise and naked is he on the path, | |
As thou perceivest; and he needs must feel, | |
Whoever passes, first how much he weighs; | |
And in like mode his father-in-law is punished | |
Within this moat, and the others of the council, | |
Which for the Jews was a malignant seed." | |
And thereupon I saw Virgilius marvel | |
O'er him who was extended on the cross | |
So vilely in eternal banishment. | |
Then he directed to the Friar this voice: | |
"Be not displeased, if granted thee, to tell us | |
If to the right hand any pass <DW72> down | |
By which we two may issue forth from here, | |
Without constraining some of the black angels | |
To come and extricate us from this deep." | |
Then he made answer: "Nearer than thou hopest | |
There is a rock, that forth from the great circle | |
Proceeds, and crosses all the cruel valleys, | |
Save that at this 'tis broken, and does not bridge it; | |
You will be able to mount up the ruin, | |
That sidelong <DW72>s and at the bottom rises." | |
The Leader stood awhile with head bowed down; | |
Then said: "The business badly he recounted | |
Who grapples with his hook the sinners yonder." | |
And the Friar: "Many of the Devil's vices | |
Once heard I at Bologna, and among them, | |
That he's a liar and the father of lies." | |
Thereat my Leader with great strides went on, | |
Somewhat disturbed with anger in his looks; | |
Whence from the heavy-laden I departed | |
After the prints of his beloved feet. | |
Inferno: Canto XXIV | |
In that part of the youthful year wherein | |
The Sun his locks beneath Aquarius tempers, | |
And now the nights draw near to half the day, | |
What time the hoar-frost copies on the ground | |
The outward semblance of her sister white, | |
But little lasts the temper of her pen, | |
The husbandman, whose forage faileth him, | |
Rises, and looks, and seeth the champaign | |
All gleaming white, whereat he beats his flank, | |
Returns in doors, and up and down laments, | |
Like a poor wretch, who knows not what to do; | |
Then he returns and hope revives again, | |
Seeing the world has changed its countenance | |
In little time, and takes his shepherd's crook, | |
And forth the little lambs to pasture drives. | |
Thus did the Master fill me with alarm, | |
When I beheld his forehead so disturbed, | |
And to the ailment came as soon the plaster. | |
For as we came unto the ruined bridge, | |
The Leader turned to me with that sweet look | |
Which at the mountain's foot I first beheld. | |
His arms he opened, after some advisement | |
Within himself elected, looking first | |
Well at the ruin, and laid hold of me. | |
And even as he who acts and meditates, | |
For aye it seems that he provides beforehand, | |
So upward lifting me towards the summit | |
Of a huge rock, he scanned another crag, | |
Saying: "To that one grapple afterwards, | |
But try first if 'tis such that it will hold thee." | |
This was no way for one clothed with a cloak; | |
For hardly we, he light, and I pushed upward, | |
Were able to ascend from jag to jag. | |
And had it not been, that upon that precinct | |
Shorter was the ascent than on the other, | |
He I know not, but I had been dead beat. | |
But because Malebolge tow'rds the mouth | |
Of the profoundest well is all inclining, | |
The structure of each valley doth import | |
That one bank rises and the other sinks. | |
Still we arrived at length upon the point | |
Wherefrom the last stone breaks itself asunder. | |
The breath was from my lungs so milked away, | |
When I was up, that I could go no farther, | |
Nay, I sat down upon my first arrival. | |
"Now it behoves thee thus to put off sloth," | |
My Master said; "for sitting upon down, | |
Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame, | |
Withouten which whoso his life consumes | |
Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth, | |
As smoke in air or in the water foam. | |
And therefore raise thee up, o'ercome the anguish | |
With spirit that o'ercometh every battle, | |
If with its heavy body it sink not. | |
A longer stairway it behoves thee mount; | |
'Tis not enough from these to have departed; | |
Let it avail thee, if thou understand me." | |
Then I uprose, showing myself provided | |
Better with breath than I did feel myself, | |
And said: "Go on, for I am strong and bold." | |
Upward we took our way along the crag, | |
Which jagged was, and narrow, and difficult, | |
And more precipitous far than that before. | |
Speaking I went, not to appear exhausted; | |
Whereat a voice from the next moat came forth, | |
Not well adapted to articulate words. | |
I know not what it said, though o'er the back | |
I now was of the arch that passes there; | |
But he seemed moved to anger who was speaking. | |
I was bent downward, but my living eyes | |
Could not attain the bottom, for the dark; | |
Wherefore I: "Master, see that thou arrive | |
At the next round, and let us descend the wall; | |
For as from hence I hear and understand not, | |
So I look down and nothing I distinguish." | |
"Other response," he said, "I make thee not, | |
Except the doing; for the modest asking | |
Ought to be followed by the deed in silence." | |
We from the bridge descended at its head, | |
Where it connects itself with the eighth bank, | |
And then was manifest to me the Bolgia; | |
And I beheld therein a terrible throng | |
Of serpents, and of such a monstrous kind, | |
That the remembrance still congeals my blood | |
Let Libya boast no longer with her sand; | |
For if Chelydri, Jaculi, and Phareae | |
She breeds, with Cenchri and with Amphisbaena, | |
Neither so many plagues nor so malignant | |
E'er showed she with all Ethiopia, | |
Nor with whatever on the Red Sea is! | |
Among this cruel and most dismal throng | |
People were running naked and affrighted. | |
Without the hope of hole or heliotrope. | |
They had their hands with serpents bound behind them; | |
These riveted upon their reins the tail | |
And head, and were in front of them entwined. | |
And lo! at one who was upon our side | |
There darted forth a serpent, which transfixed him | |
There where the neck is knotted to the shoulders. | |
Nor 'O' so quickly e'er, nor 'I' was written, | |
As he took fire, and burned; and ashes wholly | |
Behoved it that in falling he became. | |
And when he on the ground was thus destroyed, | |
The ashes drew together, and of themselves | |
Into himself they instantly returned. | |
Even thus by the great sages 'tis confessed | |
The phoenix dies, and then is born again, | |
When it approaches its five-hundredth year; | |
On herb or grain it feeds not in its life, | |
But only on tears of incense and amomum, | |
And nard and myrrh are its last winding-sheet. | |
And as he is who falls, and knows not how, | |
By force of demons who to earth down drag him, | |
Or other oppilation that binds man, | |
When he arises and around him looks, | |
Wholly bewildered by the mighty anguish | |
Which he has suffered, and in looking sighs; | |
Such was that sinner after he had risen. | |
Justice of God! O how severe it is, | |
That blows like these in vengeance poureth down! | |
The Guide thereafter asked him who he was; | |
Whence he replied: "I rained from Tuscany | |
A short time since into this cruel gorge. | |
A bestial life, and not a human, pleased me, | |
Even as the mule I was; I'm Vanni Fucci, | |
Beast, and Pistoia was my worthy den." | |
And I unto the Guide: "Tell him to stir not, | |
And ask what crime has thrust him here below, | |
For once a man of blood and wrath I saw him." | |
And the sinner, who had heard, dissembled not, | |
But unto me directed mind and face, | |
And with a melancholy shame was painted. | |
Then said: "It pains me more that thou hast caught me | |
Amid this misery where thou seest me, | |
Than when I from the other life was taken. | |
What thou demandest I cannot deny; | |
So low am I put down because I robbed | |
The sacristy of the fair ornaments, | |
And falsely once 'twas laid upon another; | |
But that thou mayst not such a sight enjoy, | |
If thou shalt e'er be out of the dark places, | |
Thine ears to my announcement ope and hear: | |
Pistoia first of Neri groweth meagre; | |
Then Florence doth renew her men and manners; | |
Mars draws a vapour up from Val di Magra, | |
Which is with turbid clouds enveloped round, | |
And with impetuous and bitter tempest | |
Over Campo Picen shall be the battle; | |
When it shall suddenly rend the mist asunder, | |
So that each Bianco shall thereby be smitten. | |
And this I've said that it may give thee pain." | |
Inferno: Canto XXV | |
At the conclusion of his words, the thief | |
Lifted his hands aloft with both the figs, | |
Crying: "Take that, God, for at thee I aim them." | |
From that time forth the serpents were my friends; | |
For one entwined itself about his neck | |
As if it said: "I will not thou speak more;" | |
And round his arms another, and rebound him, | |
Clinching itself together so in front, | |
That with them he could not a motion make. | |
Pistoia, ah, Pistoia! why resolve not | |
To burn thyself to ashes and so perish, | |
Since in ill-doing thou thy seed excellest? | |
Through all the sombre circles of this Hell, | |
Spirit I saw not against God so proud, | |
Not he who fell at Thebes down from the walls! | |
He fled away, and spake no further word; | |
And I beheld a Centaur full of rage | |
Come crying out: "Where is, where is the scoffer?" | |
I do not think Maremma has so many | |
Serpents as he had all along his back, | |
As far as where our countenance begins. | |
Upon the shoulders, just behind the nape, | |
With wings wide open was a dragon lying, | |
And he sets fire to all that he encounters. | |
My Master said: "That one is Cacus, who | |
Beneath the rock upon Mount Aventine | |
Created oftentimes a lake of blood. | |
He goes not on the same road with his brothers, | |
By reason of the fraudulent theft he made | |
Of the great herd, which he had near to him; | |
Whereat his tortuous actions ceased beneath | |
The mace of Hercules, who peradventure | |
Gave him a hundred, and he felt not ten." | |
While he was speaking thus, he had passed by, | |
And spirits three had underneath us come, | |
Of which nor I aware was, nor my Leader, | |
Until what time they shouted: "Who are you?" | |
On which account our story made a halt, | |
And then we were intent on them alone. | |
I did not know them; but it came to pass, | |
As it is wont to happen by some chance, | |
That one to name the other was compelled, | |
Exclaiming: "Where can Cianfa have remained?" | |
Whence I, so that the Leader might attend, | |
Upward from chin to nose my finger laid. | |
If thou art, Reader, slow now to believe | |
What I shall say, it will no marvel be, | |
For I who saw it hardly can admit it. | |
As I was holding raised on them my brows, | |
Behold! a serpent with six feet darts forth | |
In front of one, and fastens wholly on him. | |
With middle feet it bound him round the paunch, | |
And with the forward ones his arms it seized; | |
Then thrust its teeth through one cheek and the other; | |
The hindermost it stretched upon his thighs, | |
And put its tail through in between the two, | |
And up behind along the reins outspread it. | |
Ivy was never fastened by its barbs | |
Unto a tree so, as this horrible reptile | |
Upon the other's limbs entwined its own. | |
Then they stuck close, as if of heated wax | |
They had been made, and intermixed their colour; | |
Nor one nor other seemed now what he was; | |
E'en as proceedeth on before the flame | |
Upward along the paper a brown colour, | |
Which is not black as yet, and the white dies. | |
The other two looked on, and each of them | |
Cried out: "O me, Agnello, how thou changest! | |
Behold, thou now art neither two nor one." | |
Already the two heads had one become, | |
When there appeared to us two figures mingled | |
Into one face, wherein the two were lost. | |
Of the four lists were fashioned the two arms, | |
The thighs and legs, the belly and the chest | |
Members became that never yet were seen. | |
Every original aspect there was cancelled; | |
Two and yet none did the perverted image | |
Appear, and such departed with slow pace. | |
Even as a lizard, under the great scourge | |
Of days canicular, exchanging hedge, | |
Lightning appeareth if the road it cross; | |
Thus did appear, coming towards the bellies | |
Of the two others, a small fiery serpent, | |
Livid and black as is a peppercorn. | |
And in that part whereat is first received | |
Our aliment, it one of them transfixed; | |
Then downward fell in front of him extended. | |
The one transfixed looked at it, but said naught; | |
Nay, rather with feet motionless he yawned, | |
Just as if sleep or fever had assailed him. | |
He at the serpent gazed, and it at him; | |
One through the wound, the other through the mouth | |
Smoked violently, and the smoke commingled. | |
Henceforth be silent Lucan, where he mentions | |
Wretched Sabellus and Nassidius, | |
And wait to hear what now shall be shot forth. | |
Be silent Ovid, of Cadmus and Arethusa; | |
For if him to a snake, her to fountain, | |
Converts he fabling, that I grudge him not; | |
Because two natures never front to front | |
Has he transmuted, so that both the forms | |
To interchange their matter ready were. | |
Together they responded in such wise, | |
That to a fork the serpent cleft his tail, | |
And eke the wounded drew his feet together. | |
The legs together with the thighs themselves | |
Adhered so, that in little time the juncture | |
No sign whatever made that was apparent. | |
He with the cloven tail assumed the figure | |
The other one was losing, and his skin | |
Became elastic, and the other's hard. | |
I saw the arms draw inward at the armpits, | |
And both feet of the reptile, that were short, | |
Lengthen as much as those contracted were. | |
Thereafter the hind feet, together twisted, | |
Became the member that a man conceals, | |
And of his own the wretch had two created. | |
While both of them the exhalation veils | |
With a new colour, and engenders hair | |
On one of them and depilates the other, | |
The one uprose and down the other fell, | |
Though turning not away their impious lamps, | |
Underneath which each one his muzzle changed. | |
He who was standing drew it tow'rds the temples, | |
And from excess of matter, which came thither, | |
Issued the ears from out the hollow cheeks; | |
What did not backward run and was retained | |
Of that excess made to the face a nose, | |
And the lips thickened far as was befitting. | |
He who lay prostrate thrusts his muzzle forward, | |
And backward draws the ears into his head, | |
In the same manner as the snail its horns; | |
And so the tongue, which was entire and apt | |
For speech before, is cleft, and the bi-forked | |
In the other closes up, and the smoke ceases. | |
The soul, which to a reptile had been changed, | |
Along the valley hissing takes to flight, | |
And after him the other speaking sputters. | |
Then did he turn upon him his new shoulders, | |
And said to the other: "I'll have Buoso run, | |
Crawling as I have done, along this road." | |
In this way I beheld the seventh ballast | |
Shift and reshift, and here be my excuse | |
The novelty, if aught my pen transgress. | |
And notwithstanding that mine eyes might be | |
Somewhat bewildered, and my mind dismayed, | |
They could not flee away so secretly | |
But that I plainly saw Puccio Sciancato; | |
And he it was who sole of three companions, | |
Which came in the beginning, was not changed; | |
The other was he whom thou, Gaville, weepest. | |
Inferno: Canto XXVI | |
Rejoice, O Florence, since thou art so great, | |
That over sea and land thou beatest thy wings, | |
And throughout Hell thy name is spread abroad! | |
Among the thieves five citizens of thine | |
Like these I found, whence shame comes unto me, | |
And thou thereby to no great honour risest. | |
But if when morn is near our dreams are true, | |
Feel shalt thou in a little time from now | |
What Prato, if none other, craves for thee. | |
And if it now were, it were not too soon; | |
Would that it were, seeing it needs must be, | |
For 'twill aggrieve me more the more I age. | |
We went our way, and up along the stairs | |
The bourns had made us to descend before, | |
Remounted my Conductor and drew me. | |
And following the solitary path | |
Among the rocks and ridges of the crag, | |
The foot without the hand sped not at all. | |
Then sorrowed I, and sorrow now again, | |
When I direct my mind to what I saw, | |
And more my genius curb than I am wont, | |
That it may run not unless virtue guide it; | |
So that if some good star, or better thing, | |
Have given me good, I may myself not grudge it. | |
As many as the hind (who on the hill | |
Rests at the time when he who lights the world | |
His countenance keeps least concealed from us, | |
While as the fly gives place unto the gnat) | |
Seeth the glow-worms down along the valley, | |
Perchance there where he ploughs and makes his vintage; | |
With flames as manifold resplendent all | |
Was the eighth Bolgia, as I grew aware | |
As soon as I was where the depth appeared. | |
And such as he who with the bears avenged him | |
Beheld Elijah's chariot at departing, | |
What time the steeds to heaven erect uprose, | |
For with his eye he could not follow it | |
So as to see aught else than flame alone, | |
Even as a little cloud ascending upward, | |
Thus each along the gorge of the intrenchment | |
Was moving; for not one reveals the theft, | |
And every flame a sinner steals away. | |
I stood upon the bridge uprisen to see, | |
So that, if I had seized not on a rock, | |
Down had I fallen without being pushed. | |
And the Leader, who beheld me so attent, | |
Exclaimed: "Within the fires the spirits are; | |
Each swathes himself with that wherewith he burns." | |
"My Master," I replied, "by hearing thee | |
I am more sure; but I surmised already | |
It might be so, and already wished to ask thee | |
Who is within that fire, which comes so cleft | |
At top, it seems uprising from the pyre | |
Where was Eteocles with his brother placed." | |
He answered me: "Within there are tormented | |
Ulysses and Diomed, and thus together | |
They unto vengeance run as unto wrath. | |
And there within their flame do they lament | |
The ambush of the horse, which made the door | |
Whence issued forth the Romans' gentle seed; | |
Therein is wept the craft, for which being dead | |
Deidamia still deplores Achilles, | |
And pain for the Palladium there is borne." | |
"If they within those sparks possess the power | |
To speak," I said, "thee, Master, much I pray, | |
And re-pray, that the prayer be worth a thousand, | |
That thou make no denial of awaiting | |
Until the horned flame shall hither come; | |
Thou seest that with desire I lean towards it." | |
And he to me: "Worthy is thy entreaty | |
Of much applause, and therefore I accept it; | |
But take heed that thy tongue restrain itself. | |
Leave me to speak, because I have conceived | |
That which thou wishest; for they might disdain | |
Perchance, since they were Greeks, discourse of thine." | |
When now the flame had come unto that point, | |
Where to my Leader it seemed time and place, | |
After this fashion did I hear him speak: | |
"O ye, who are twofold within one fire, | |
If I deserved of you, while I was living, | |
If I deserved of you or much or little | |
When in the world I wrote the lofty verses, | |
Do not move on, but one of you declare | |
Whither, being lost, he went away to die." | |
Then of the antique flame the greater horn, | |
Murmuring, began to wave itself about | |
Even as a flame doth which the wind fatigues. | |
Thereafterward, the summit to and fro | |
Moving as if it were the tongue that spake, | |
It uttered forth a voice, and said: "When I | |
From Circe had departed, who concealed me | |
More than a year there near unto Gaeta, | |
Or ever yet Aeneas named it so, | |
Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence | |
For my old father, nor the due affection | |
Which joyous should have made Penelope, | |
Could overcome within me the desire | |
I had to be experienced of the world, | |
And of the vice and virtue of mankind; | |
But I put forth on the high open sea | |
With one sole ship, and that small company | |
By which I never had deserted been. | |
Both of the shores I saw as far as Spain, | |
Far as Morocco, and the isle of Sardes, | |
And the others which that sea bathes round about. | |
I and my company were old and slow | |
When at that narrow passage we arrived | |
Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals, | |
That man no farther onward should adventure. | |
On the right hand behind me left I Seville, | |
And on the other already had left Ceuta. | |
'O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand | |
Perils,' I said, 'have come unto the West, | |
To this so inconsiderable vigil | |
Which is remaining of your senses still | |
Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge, | |
Following the sun, of the unpeopled world. | |
Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang; | |
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes, | |
But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.' | |
So eager did I render my companions, | |
With this brief exhortation, for the voyage, | |
That then I hardly could have held them back. | |
And having turned our stern unto the morning, | |
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight, | |
Evermore gaining on the larboard side. | |
Already all the stars of the other pole | |
The night beheld, and ours so very low | |
It did not rise above the ocean floor. | |
Five times rekindled and as many quenched | |
Had been the splendour underneath the moon, | |
Since we had entered into the deep pass, | |
When there appeared to us a mountain, dim | |
From distance, and it seemed to me so high | |
As I had never any one beheld. | |
Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping; | |
For out of the new land a whirlwind rose, | |
And smote upon the fore part of the ship. | |
Three times it made her whirl with all the waters, | |
At the fourth time it made the stern uplift, | |
And the prow downward go, as pleased Another, | |
Until the sea above us closed again." | |
Inferno: Canto XXVII | |
Already was the flame erect and quiet, | |
To speak no more, and now departed from us | |
With the permission of the gentle Poet; | |
When yet another, which behind it came, | |
Caused us to turn our eyes upon its top | |
By a confused sound that issued from it. | |
As the Sicilian bull (that bellowed first | |
With the lament of him, and that was right, | |
Who with his file had modulated it) | |
Bellowed so with the voice of the afflicted, | |
That, notwithstanding it was made of brass, | |
Still it appeared with agony transfixed; | |
Thus, by not having any way or issue | |
At first from out the fire, to its own language | |
Converted were the melancholy words. | |
But afterwards, when they had gathered way | |
Up through the point, giving it that vibration | |
The tongue had given them in their passage out, | |
We heard it said: "O thou, at whom I aim | |
My voice, and who but now wast speaking Lombard, | |
Saying, 'Now go thy way, no more I urge thee,' | |
Because I come perchance a little late, | |
To stay and speak with me let it not irk thee; | |
Thou seest it irks not me, and I am burning. | |
If thou but lately into this blind world | |
Hast fallen down from that sweet Latian land, | |
Wherefrom I bring the whole of my transgression, | |
Say, if the Romagnuols have peace or war, | |
For I was from the mountains there between | |
Urbino and the yoke whence Tiber bursts." | |
I still was downward bent and listening, | |
When my Conductor touched me on the side, | |
Saying: "Speak thou: this one a Latian is." | |
And I, who had beforehand my reply | |
In readiness, forthwith began to speak: | |
"O soul, that down below there art concealed, | |
Romagna thine is not and never has been | |
Without war in the bosom of its tyrants; | |
But open war I none have left there now. | |
Ravenna stands as it long years has stood; | |
The Eagle of Polenta there is brooding, | |
So that she covers Cervia with her vans. | |
The city which once made the long resistance, | |
And of the French a sanguinary heap, | |
Beneath the Green Paws finds itself again; | |
Verrucchio's ancient Mastiff and the new, | |
Who made such bad disposal of Montagna, | |
Where they are wont make wimbles of their teeth. | |
The cities of Lamone and Santerno | |
Governs the Lioncel of the white lair, | |
Who changes sides 'twixt summer-time and winter; | |
And that of which the Savio bathes the flank, | |
Even as it lies between the plain and mountain, | |
Lives between tyranny and a free state. | |
Now I entreat thee tell us who thou art; | |
Be not more stubborn than the rest have been, | |
So may thy name hold front there in the world." | |
After the fire a little more had roared | |
In its own fashion, the sharp point it moved | |
This way and that, and then gave forth such breath: | |
"If I believed that my reply were made | |
To one who to the world would e'er return, | |
This flame without more flickering would stand still; | |
But inasmuch as never from this depth | |
Did any one return, if I hear true, | |
Without the fear of infamy I answer, | |
I was a man of arms, then Cordelier, | |
Believing thus begirt to make amends; | |
And truly my belief had been fulfilled | |
But for the High Priest, whom may ill betide, | |
Who put me back into my former sins; | |
And how and wherefore I will have thee hear. | |
While I was still the form of bone and pulp | |
My mother gave to me, the deeds I did | |
Were not those of a lion, but a fox. | |
The machinations and the covert ways | |
I knew them all, and practised so their craft, | |
That to the ends of earth the sound went forth. | |
When now unto that portion of mine age | |
I saw myself arrived, when each one ought | |
To lower the sails, and coil away the ropes, | |
That which before had pleased me then displeased me; | |
And penitent and confessing I surrendered, | |
Ah woe is me! and it would have bestead me; | |
The Leader of the modern Pharisees | |
Having a war near unto Lateran, | |
And not with Saracens nor with the Jews, | |
For each one of his enemies was Christian, | |
And none of them had been to conquer Acre, | |
Nor merchandising in the Sultan's land, | |
Nor the high office, nor the sacred orders, | |
In him regarded, nor in me that cord | |
Which used to make those girt with it more meagre; | |
But even as Constantine sought out Sylvester | |
To cure his leprosy, within Soracte, | |
So this one sought me out as an adept | |
To cure him of the fever of his pride. | |
Counsel he asked of me, and I was silent, | |
Because his words appeared inebriate. | |
And then he said: 'Be not thy heart afraid; | |
Henceforth I thee absolve; and thou instruct me | |
How to raze Palestrina to the ground. | |
Heaven have I power to lock and to unlock, | |
As thou dost know; therefore the keys are two, | |
The which my predecessor held not dear.' | |
Then urged me on his weighty arguments | |
There, where my silence was the worst advice; | |
And said I: 'Father, since thou washest me | |
Of that sin into which I now must fall, | |
The promise long with the fulfilment short | |
Will make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.' | |
Francis came afterward, when I was dead, | |
For me; but one of the black Cherubim | |
Said to him: 'Take him not; do me no wrong; | |
He must come down among my servitors, | |
Because he gave the fraudulent advice | |
From which time forth I have been at his hair; | |
For who repents not cannot be absolved, | |
Nor can one both repent and will at once, | |
Because of the contradiction which consents not.' | |
O miserable me! how I did shudder | |
When he seized on me, saying: 'Peradventure | |
Thou didst not think that I was a logician!' | |
He bore me unto Minos, who entwined | |
Eight times his tail about his stubborn back, | |
And after he had bitten it in great rage, | |
Said: 'Of the thievish fire a culprit this;' | |
Wherefore, here where thou seest, am I lost, | |
And vested thus in going I bemoan me." | |
When it had thus completed its recital, | |
The flame departed uttering lamentations, | |
Writhing and flapping its sharp-pointed horn. | |
Onward we passed, both I and my Conductor, | |
Up o'er the crag above another arch, | |
Which the moat covers, where is paid the fee | |
By those who, sowing discord, win their burden. | |
Inferno: Canto XXVIII | |
Who ever could, e'en with untrammelled words, | |
Tell of the blood and of the wounds in full | |
Which now I saw, by many times narrating? | |
Each tongue would for a certainty fall short | |
By reason of our speech and memory, | |
That have small room to comprehend so much. | |
If were again assembled all the people | |
Which formerly upon the fateful land | |
Of Puglia were lamenting for their blood | |
Shed by the Romans and the lingering war | |
That of the rings made such illustrious spoils, | |
As Livy has recorded, who errs not, | |
With those who felt the agony of blows | |
By making counterstand to Robert Guiscard, | |
And all the rest, whose bones are gathered still | |
At Ceperano, where a renegade | |
Was each Apulian, and at Tagliacozzo, | |
Where without arms the old Alardo conquered, | |
And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off, | |
Should show, it would be nothing to compare | |
With the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia. | |
A cask by losing centre-piece or cant | |
Was never shattered so, as I saw one | |
Rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind. | |
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails; | |
His heart was visible, and the dismal sack | |
That maketh excrement of what is eaten. | |
While I was all absorbed in seeing him, | |
He looked at me, and opened with his hands | |
His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me; | |
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; | |
In front of me doth Ali weeping go, | |
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin; | |
And all the others whom thou here beholdest, | |
Disseminators of scandal and of schism | |
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus. | |
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us | |
Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge | |
Putting again each one of all this ream, | |
When we have gone around the doleful road; | |
By reason that our wounds are closed again | |
Ere any one in front of him repass. | |
But who art thou, that musest on the crag, | |
Perchance to postpone going to the pain | |
That is adjudged upon thine accusations?" | |
"Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him," | |
My Master made reply, "to be tormented; | |
But to procure him full experience, | |
Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him | |
Down here through Hell, from circle unto circle; | |
And this is true as that I speak to thee." | |
More than a hundred were there when they heard him, | |
Who in the moat stood still to look at me, | |
Through wonderment oblivious of their torture. | |
"Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him, | |
Thou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun, | |
If soon he wish not here to follow me, | |
So with provisions, that no stress of snow | |
May give the victory to the Novarese, | |
Which otherwise to gain would not be easy." | |
After one foot to go away he lifted, | |
This word did Mahomet say unto me, | |
Then to depart upon the ground he stretched it. | |
Another one, who had his throat pierced through, | |
And nose cut off close underneath the brows, | |
And had no longer but a single ear, | |
Staying to look in wonder with the others, | |
Before the others did his gullet open, | |
Which outwardly was red in every part, | |
And said: "O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn, | |
And whom I once saw up in Latian land, | |
Unless too great similitude deceive me, | |
Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina, | |
If e'er thou see again the lovely plain | |
That from Vercelli <DW72>s to Marcabo, | |
And make it known to the best two of Fano, | |
To Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise, | |
That if foreseeing here be not in vain, | |
Cast over from their vessel shall they be, | |
And drowned near unto the Cattolica, | |
By the betrayal of a tyrant fell. | |
Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca | |
Neptune ne'er yet beheld so great a crime, | |
Neither of pirates nor Argolic people. | |
That traitor, who sees only with one eye, | |
And holds the land, which some one here with me | |
Would fain be fasting from the vision of, | |
Will make them come unto a parley with him; | |
Then will do so, that to Focara's wind | |
They will not stand in need of vow or prayer." | |
And I to him: "Show to me and declare, | |
If thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee, | |
Who is this person of the bitter vision." | |
Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw | |
Of one of his companions, and his mouth | |
Oped, crying: "This is he, and he speaks not. | |
This one, being banished, every doubt submerged | |
In Caesar by affirming the forearmed | |
Always with detriment allowed delay." | |
O how bewildered unto me appeared, | |
With tongue asunder in his windpipe slit, | |
Curio, who in speaking was so bold! | |
And one, who both his hands dissevered had, | |
The stumps uplifting through the murky air, | |
So that the blood made horrible his face, | |
Cried out: "Thou shalt remember Mosca also, | |
Who said, alas! 'A thing done has an end!' | |
Which was an ill seed for the Tuscan people." | |
"And death unto thy race," thereto I added; | |
Whence he, accumulating woe on woe, | |
Departed, like a person sad and crazed. | |
But I remained to look upon the crowd; | |
And saw a thing which I should be afraid, | |
Without some further proof, even to recount, | |
If it were not that conscience reassures me, | |
That good companion which emboldens man | |
Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure. | |
I truly saw, and still I seem to see it, | |
A trunk without a head walk in like manner | |
As walked the others of the mournful herd. | |
And by the hair it held the head dissevered, | |
Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern, | |
And that upon us gazed and said: "O me!" | |
It of itself made to itself a lamp, | |
And they were two in one, and one in two; | |
How that can be, He knows who so ordains it. | |
When it was come close to the bridge's foot, | |
It lifted high its arm with all the head, | |
To bring more closely unto us its words, | |
Which were: "Behold now the sore penalty, | |
Thou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding; | |
Behold if any be as great as this. | |
And so that thou may carry news of me, | |
Know that Bertram de Born am I, the same | |
Who gave to the Young King the evil comfort. | |
I made the father and the son rebellious; | |
Achitophel not more with Absalom | |
And David did with his accursed goadings. | |
Because I parted persons so united, | |
Parted do I now bear my brain, alas! | |
From its beginning, which is in this trunk. | |
Thus is observed in me the counterpoise." | |
Inferno: Canto XXIX | |
The many people and the divers wounds | |
These eyes of mine had so inebriated, | |
That they were wishful to stand still and weep; | |
But said Virgilius: "What dost thou still gaze at? | |
Why is thy sight still riveted down there | |
Among the mournful, mutilated shades? | |
Thou hast not done so at the other Bolge; | |
Consider, if to count them thou believest, | |
That two-and-twenty miles the valley winds, | |
And now the moon is underneath our feet; | |
Henceforth the time allotted us is brief, | |
And more is to be seen than what thou seest." | |
"If thou hadst," I made answer thereupon, | |
"Attended to the cause for which I looked, | |
Perhaps a longer stay thou wouldst have pardoned." | |
Meanwhile my Guide departed, and behind him | |
I went, already making my reply, | |
And superadding: "In that cavern where | |
I held mine eyes with such attention fixed, | |
I think a spirit of my blood laments | |
The sin which down below there costs so much." | |
Then said the Master: "Be no longer broken | |
Thy thought from this time forward upon him; | |
Attend elsewhere, and there let him remain; | |
For him I saw below the little bridge, | |
Pointing at thee, and threatening with his finger | |
Fiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello. | |
So wholly at that time wast thou impeded | |
By him who formerly held Altaforte, | |
Thou didst not look that way; so he departed." | |
"O my Conductor, his own violent death, | |
Which is not yet avenged for him," I said, | |
"By any who is sharer in the shame, | |
Made him disdainful; whence he went away, | |
As I imagine, without speaking to me, | |
And thereby made me pity him the more." | |
Thus did we speak as far as the first place | |
Upon the crag, which the next valley shows | |
Down to the bottom, if there were more light. | |
When we were now right over the last cloister | |
Of Malebolge, so that its lay-brothers | |
Could manifest themselves unto our sight, | |
Divers lamentings pierced me through and through, | |
Which with compassion had their arrows barbed, | |
Whereat mine ears I covered with my hands. | |
What pain would be, if from the hospitals | |
Of Valdichiana, 'twixt July and September, | |
And of Maremma and Sardinia | |
All the diseases in one moat were gathered, | |
Such was it here, and such a stench came from it | |
As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue. | |
We had descended on the furthest bank | |
From the long crag, upon the left hand still, | |
And then more vivid was my power of sight | |
Down tow'rds the bottom, where the ministress | |
Of the high Lord, Justice infallible, | |
Punishes forgers, which she here records. | |
I do not think a sadder sight to see | |
Was in Aegina the whole people sick, | |
(When was the air so full of pestilence, | |
The animals, down to the little worm, | |
All fell, and afterwards the ancient people, | |
According as the poets have affirmed, | |
Were from the seed of ants restored again,) | |
Than was it to behold through that dark valley | |
The spirits languishing in divers heaps. | |
This on the belly, that upon the back | |
One of the other lay, and others crawling | |
Shifted themselves along the dismal road. | |
We step by step went onward without speech, | |
Gazing upon and listening to the sick | |
Who had not strength enough to lift their bodies. | |
I saw two sitting leaned against each other, | |
As leans in heating platter against platter, | |
From head to foot bespotted o'er with scabs; | |
And never saw I plied a currycomb | |
By stable-boy for whom his master waits, | |
Or him who keeps awake unwillingly, | |
As every one was plying fast the bite | |
Of nails upon himself, for the great rage | |
Of itching which no other succour had. | |
And the nails downward with them dragged the scab, | |
In fashion as a knife the scales of bream, | |
Or any other fish that has them largest. | |
"O thou, that with thy fingers dost dismail thee," | |
Began my Leader unto one of them, | |
"And makest of them pincers now and then, | |
Tell me if any Latian is with those | |
Who are herein; so may thy nails suffice thee | |
To all eternity unto this work." | |
"Latians are we, whom thou so wasted seest, | |
Both of us here," one weeping made reply; | |
"But who art thou, that questionest about us?" | |
And said the Guide: "One am I who descends | |
Down with this living man from cliff to cliff, | |
And I intend to show Hell unto him." | |
Then broken was their mutual support, | |
And trembling each one turned himself to me, | |
With others who had heard him by rebound. | |
Wholly to me did the good Master gather, | |
Saying: "Say unto them whate'er thou wishest." | |
And I began, since he would have it so: | |
"So may your memory not steal away | |
In the first world from out the minds of men, | |
But so may it survive 'neath many suns, | |
Say to me who ye are, and of what people; | |
Let not your foul and loathsome punishment | |
Make you afraid to show yourselves to me." | |
"I of Arezzo was," one made reply, | |
"And Albert of Siena had me burned; | |
But what I died for does not bring me here. | |
'Tis true I said to him, speaking in jest, | |
That I could rise by flight into the air, | |
And he who had conceit, but little wit, | |
Would have me show to him the art; and only | |
Because no Daedalus I made him, made me | |
Be burned by one who held him as his son. | |
But unto the last Bolgia of the ten, | |
For alchemy, which in the world I practised, | |
Minos, who cannot err, has me condemned." | |
And to the Poet said I: "Now was ever | |
So vain a people as the Sienese? | |
Not for a certainty the French by far." | |
Whereat the other leper, who had heard me, | |
Replied unto my speech: "Taking out Stricca, | |
Who knew the art of moderate expenses, | |
And Niccolo, who the luxurious use | |
Of cloves discovered earliest of all | |
Within that garden where such seed takes root; | |
And taking out the band, among whom squandered | |
Caccia d'Ascian his vineyards and vast woods, | |
And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered! | |
But, that thou know who thus doth second thee | |
Against the Sienese, make sharp thine eye | |
Tow'rds me, so that my face well answer thee, | |
And thou shalt see I am Capocchio's shade, | |
Who metals falsified by alchemy; | |
Thou must remember, if I well descry thee, | |
How I a skilful ape of nature was." | |
Inferno: Canto XXX | |
'Twas at the time when Juno was enraged, | |
For Semele, against the Theban blood, | |
As she already more than once had shown, | |
So reft of reason Athamas became, | |
That, seeing his own wife with children twain | |
Walking encumbered upon either hand, | |
He cried: "Spread out the nets, that I may take | |
The lioness and her whelps upon the passage;" | |
And then extended his unpitying claws, | |
Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus, | |
And whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock; | |
And she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;-- | |
And at the time when fortune downward hurled | |
The Trojan's arrogance, that all things dared, | |
So that the king was with his kingdom crushed, | |
Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive, | |
When lifeless she beheld Polyxena, | |
And of her Polydorus on the shore | |
Of ocean was the dolorous one aware, | |
Out of her senses like a dog she barked, | |
So much the anguish had her mind distorted; | |
But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan | |
Were ever seen in any one so cruel | |
In goading beasts, and much more human members, | |
As I beheld two shadows pale and naked, | |
Who, biting, in the manner ran along | |
That a boar does, when from the sty turned loose. | |
One to Capocchio came, and by the nape | |
Seized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging | |
It made his belly grate the solid bottom. | |
And the Aretine, who trembling had remained, | |
Said to me: "That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi, | |
And raving goes thus harrying other people." | |
"O," said I to him, "so may not the other | |
Set teeth on thee, let it not weary thee | |
To tell us who it is, ere it dart hence." | |
And he to me: "That is the ancient ghost | |
Of the nefarious Myrrha, who became | |
Beyond all rightful love her father's lover. | |
She came to sin with him after this manner, | |
By counterfeiting of another's form; | |
As he who goeth yonder undertook, | |
That he might gain the lady of the herd, | |
To counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati, | |
Making a will and giving it due form." | |
And after the two maniacs had passed | |
On whom I held mine eye, I turned it back | |
To look upon the other evil-born. | |
I saw one made in fashion of a lute, | |
If he had only had the groin cut off | |
Just at the point at which a man is forked. | |
The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions | |
The limbs with humours, which it ill concocts, | |
That the face corresponds not to the belly, | |
Compelled him so to hold his lips apart | |
As does the hectic, who because of thirst | |
One tow'rds the chin, the other upward turns. | |
"O ye, who without any torment are, | |
And why I know not, in the world of woe," | |
He said to us, "behold, and be attentive | |
Unto the misery of Master Adam; | |
I had while living much of what I wished, | |
And now, alas! a drop of water crave. | |
The rivulets, that from the verdant hills | |
Of Cassentin descend down into Arno, | |
Making their channels to be cold and moist, | |
Ever before me stand, and not in vain; | |
For far more doth their image dry me up | |
Than the disease which strips my face of flesh. | |
The rigid justice that chastises me | |
Draweth occasion from the place in which | |
I sinned, to put the more my sighs in flight. | |
There is Romena, where I counterfeited | |
The currency imprinted with the Baptist, | |
For which I left my body burned above. | |
But if I here could see the tristful soul | |
Of Guido, or Alessandro, or their brother, | |
For Branda's fount I would not give the sight. | |
One is within already, if the raving | |
Shades that are going round about speak truth; | |
But what avails it me, whose limbs are tied? | |
If I were only still so light, that in | |
A hundred years I could advance one inch, | |
I had already started on the way, | |
Seeking him out among this squalid folk, | |
Although the circuit be eleven miles, | |
And be not less than half a mile across. | |
For them am I in such a family; | |
They did induce me into coining florins, | |
Which had three carats of impurity." | |
And I to him: "Who are the two poor wretches | |
That smoke like unto a wet hand in winter, | |
Lying there close upon thy right-hand confines?" | |
"I found them here," replied he, "when I rained | |
Into this chasm, and since they have not turned, | |
Nor do I think they will for evermore. | |
One the false woman is who accused Joseph, | |
The other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy; | |
From acute fever they send forth such reek." | |
And one of them, who felt himself annoyed | |
At being, peradventure, named so darkly, | |
Smote with the fist upon his hardened paunch. | |
It gave a sound, as if it were a drum; | |
And Master Adam smote him in the face, | |
With arm that did not seem to be less hard, | |
Saying to him: "Although be taken from me | |
All motion, for my limbs that heavy are, | |
I have an arm unfettered for such need." | |
Whereat he answer made: "When thou didst go | |
Unto the fire, thou hadst it not so ready: | |
But hadst it so and more when thou wast coining." | |
The dropsical: "Thou sayest true in that; | |
But thou wast not so true a witness there, | |
Where thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy." | |
"If I spake false, thou falsifiedst the coin," | |
Said Sinon; "and for one fault I am here, | |
And thou for more than any other demon." | |
"Remember, perjurer, about the horse," | |
He made reply who had the swollen belly, | |
"And rueful be it thee the whole world knows it." | |
"Rueful to thee the thirst be wherewith cracks | |
Thy tongue," the Greek said, "and the putrid water | |
That hedges so thy paunch before thine eyes." | |
Then the false-coiner: "So is gaping wide | |
Thy mouth for speaking evil, as 'tis wont; | |
Because if I have thirst, and humour stuff me | |
Thou hast the burning and the head that aches, | |
And to lick up the mirror of Narcissus | |
Thou wouldst not want words many to invite thee." | |
In listening to them was I wholly fixed, | |
When said the Master to me: "Now just look, | |
For little wants it that I quarrel with thee." | |
When him I heard in anger speak to me, | |
I turned me round towards him with such shame | |
That still it eddies through my memory. | |
And as he is who dreams of his own harm, | |
Who dreaming wishes it may be a dream, | |
So that he craves what is, as if it were not; | |
Such I became, not having power to speak, | |
For to excuse myself I wished, and still | |
Excused myself, and did not think I did it. | |
"Less shame doth wash away a greater fault," | |
The Master said, "than this of thine has been; | |
Therefore thyself disburden of all sadness, | |
And make account that I am aye beside thee, | |
If e'er it come to pass that fortune bring thee | |
Where there are people in a like dispute; | |
For a base wish it is to wish to hear it." | |
Inferno: Canto XXXI | |
One and the selfsame tongue first wounded me, | |
So that it tinged the one cheek and the other, | |
And then held out to me the medicine; | |
Thus do I hear that once Achilles' spear, | |
His and his father's, used to be the cause | |
First of a sad and then a gracious boon. | |
We turned our backs upon the wretched valley, | |
Upon the bank that girds it round about, | |
Going across it without any speech. | |
There it was less than night, and less than day, | |
So that my sight went little in advance; | |
But I could hear the blare of a loud horn, | |
So loud it would have made each thunder faint, | |
Which, counter to it following its way, | |
Mine eyes directed wholly to one place. | |
After the dolorous discomfiture | |
When Charlemagne the holy emprise lost, | |
So terribly Orlando sounded not. | |
Short while my head turned thitherward I held | |
When many lofty towers I seemed to see, | |
Whereat I: "Master, say, what town is this?" | |
And he to me: "Because thou peerest forth | |
Athwart the darkness at too great a distance, | |
It happens that thou errest in thy fancy. | |
Well shalt thou see, if thou arrivest there, | |
How much the sense deceives itself by distance; | |
Therefore a little faster spur thee on." | |
Then tenderly he took me by the hand, | |
And said: "Before we farther have advanced, | |
That the reality may seem to thee | |
Less strange, know that these are not towers, but giants, | |
And they are in the well, around the bank, | |
From navel downward, one and all of them." | |
As, when the fog is vanishing away, | |
Little by little doth the sight refigure | |
Whate'er the mist that crowds the air conceals, | |
So, piercing through the dense and darksome air, | |
More and more near approaching tow'rd the verge, | |
My error fled, and fear came over me; | |
Because as on its circular parapets | |
Montereggione crowns itself with towers, | |
E'en thus the margin which surrounds the well | |
With one half of their bodies turreted | |
The horrible giants, whom Jove menaces | |
E'en now from out the heavens when he thunders. | |
And I of one already saw the face, | |
Shoulders, and breast, and great part of the belly, | |
And down along his sides both of the arms. | |
Certainly Nature, when she left the making | |
Of animals like these, did well indeed, | |
By taking such executors from Mars; | |
And if of elephants and whales she doth not | |
Repent her, whosoever looketh subtly | |
More just and more discreet will hold her for it; | |
For where the argument of intellect | |
Is added unto evil will and power, | |
No rampart can the people make against it. | |
His face appeared to me as long and large | |
As is at Rome the pine-cone of Saint Peter's, | |
And in proportion were the other bones; | |
So that the margin, which an apron was | |
Down from the middle, showed so much of him | |
Above it, that to reach up to his hair | |
Three Frieslanders in vain had vaunted them; | |
For I beheld thirty great palms of him | |
Down from the place where man his mantle buckles. | |
"Raphael mai amech izabi almi," | |
Began to clamour the ferocious mouth, | |
To which were not befitting sweeter psalms. | |
And unto him my Guide: "Soul idiotic, | |
Keep to thy horn, and vent thyself with that, | |
When wrath or other passion touches thee. | |
Search round thy neck, and thou wilt find the belt | |
Which keeps it fastened, O bewildered soul, | |
And see it, where it bars thy mighty breast." | |
Then said to me: "He doth himself accuse; | |
This one is Nimrod, by whose evil thought | |
One language in the world is not still used. | |
Here let us leave him and not speak in vain; | |
For even such to him is every language | |
As his to others, which to none is known." | |
Therefore a longer journey did we make, | |
Turned to the left, and a crossbow-shot oft | |
We found another far more fierce and large. | |
In binding him, who might the master be | |
I cannot say; but he had pinioned close | |
Behind the right arm, and in front the other, | |
With chains, that held him so begirt about | |
From the neck down, that on the part uncovered | |
It wound itself as far as the fifth gyre. | |
"This proud one wished to make experiment | |
Of his own power against the Supreme Jove," | |
My Leader said, "whence he has such a guerdon. | |
Ephialtes is his name; he showed great prowess. | |
What time the giants terrified the gods; | |
The arms he wielded never more he moves." | |
And I to him: "If possible, I should wish | |
That of the measureless Briareus | |
These eyes of mine might have experience." | |
Whence he replied: "Thou shalt behold Antaeus | |
Close by here, who can speak and is unbound, | |
Who at the bottom of all crime shall place us. | |
Much farther yon is he whom thou wouldst see, | |
And he is bound, and fashioned like to this one, | |
Save that he seems in aspect more ferocious." | |
There never was an earthquake of such might | |
That it could shake a tower so violently, | |
As Ephialtes suddenly shook himself. | |
Then was I more afraid of death than ever, | |
For nothing more was needful than the fear, | |
If I had not beheld the manacles. | |
Then we proceeded farther in advance, | |
And to Antaeus came, who, full five ells | |
Without the head, forth issued from the cavern. | |
"O thou, who in the valley fortunate, | |
Which Scipio the heir of glory made, | |
When Hannibal turned back with all his hosts, | |
Once brought'st a thousand lions for thy prey, | |
And who, hadst thou been at the mighty war | |
Among thy brothers, some it seems still think | |
The sons of Earth the victory would have gained: | |
Place us below, nor be disdainful of it, | |
There where the cold doth lock Cocytus up. | |
Make us not go to Tityus nor Typhoeus; | |
This one can give of that which here is longed for; | |
Therefore stoop down, and do not curl thy lip. | |
Still in the world can he restore thy fame; | |
Because he lives, and still expects long life, | |
If to itself Grace call him not untimely." | |
So said the Master; and in haste the other | |
His hands extended and took up my Guide,-- | |
Hands whose great pressure Hercules once felt. | |
Virgilius, when he felt himself embraced, | |
Said unto me: "Draw nigh, that I may take thee;" | |
Then of himself and me one bundle made. | |
As seems the Carisenda, to behold | |
Beneath the leaning side, when goes a cloud | |
Above it so that opposite it hangs; | |
Such did Antaeus seem to me, who stood | |
Watching to see him stoop, and then it was | |
I could have wished to go some other way. | |
But lightly in the abyss, which swallows up | |
Judas with Lucifer, he put us down; | |
Nor thus bowed downward made he there delay, | |
But, as a mast does in a ship, uprose. | |
Inferno: Canto XXXII | |
If I had rhymes both rough and stridulous, | |
As were appropriate to the dismal hole | |
Down upon which thrust all the other rocks, | |
I would press out the juice of my conception | |
More fully; but because I have them not, | |
Not without fear I bring myself to speak; | |
For 'tis no enterprise to take in jest, | |
To sketch the bottom of all the universe, | |
Nor for a tongue that cries Mamma and Babbo. | |
But may those Ladies help this verse of mine, | |
Who helped Amphion in enclosing Thebes, | |
That from the fact the word be not diverse. | |
O rabble ill-begotten above all, | |
Who're in the place to speak of which is hard, | |
'Twere better ye had here been sheep or goats! | |
When we were down within the darksome well, | |
Beneath the giant's feet, but lower far, | |
And I was scanning still the lofty wall, | |
I heard it said to me: "Look how thou steppest! | |
Take heed thou do not trample with thy feet | |
The heads of the tired, miserable brothers!" | |
Whereat I turned me round, and saw before me | |
And underfoot a lake, that from the frost | |
The semblance had of glass, and not of water. | |
So thick a veil ne'er made upon its current | |
In winter-time Danube in Austria, | |
Nor there beneath the frigid sky the Don, | |
As there was here; so that if Tambernich | |
Had fallen upon it, or Pietrapana, | |
E'en at the edge 'twould not have given a creak. | |
And as to croak the frog doth place himself | |
With muzzle out of water,--when is dreaming | |
Of gleaning oftentimes the peasant-girl,-- | |
Livid, as far down as where shame appears, | |
Were the disconsolate shades within the ice, | |
Setting their teeth unto the note of storks. | |
Each one his countenance held downward bent; | |
From mouth the cold, from eyes the doleful heart | |
Among them witness of itself procures. | |
When round about me somewhat I had looked, | |
I downward turned me, and saw two so close, | |
The hair upon their heads together mingled. | |
"Ye who so strain your breasts together, tell me," | |
I said, "who are you;" and they bent their necks, | |
And when to me their faces they had lifted, | |
Their eyes, which first were only moist within, | |
Gushed o'er the eyelids, and the frost congealed | |
The tears between, and locked them up again. | |
Clamp never bound together wood with wood | |
So strongly; whereat they, like two he-goats, | |
Butted together, so much wrath o'ercame them. | |
And one, who had by reason of the cold | |
Lost both his ears, still with his visage downward, | |
Said: "Why dost thou so mirror thyself in us? | |
If thou desire to know who these two are, | |
The valley whence Bisenzio descends | |
Belonged to them and to their father Albert. | |
They from one body came, and all Caina | |
Thou shalt search through, and shalt not find a shade | |
More worthy to be fixed in gelatine; | |
Not he in whom were broken breast and shadow | |
At one and the same blow by Arthur's hand; | |
Focaccia not; not he who me encumbers | |
So with his head I see no farther forward, | |
And bore the name of Sassol Mascheroni; | |
Well knowest thou who he was, if thou art Tuscan. | |
And that thou put me not to further speech, | |
Know that I Camicion de' Pazzi was, | |
And wait Carlino to exonerate me." | |
Then I beheld a thousand faces, made | |
Purple with cold; whence o'er me comes a shudder, | |
And evermore will come, at frozen ponds. | |
And while we were advancing tow'rds the middle, | |
Where everything of weight unites together, | |
And I was shivering in the eternal shade, | |
Whether 'twere will, or destiny, or chance, | |
I know not; but in walking '<DW41> the heads | |
I struck my foot hard in the face of one. | |
Weeping he growled: "Why dost thou trample me? | |
Unless thou comest to increase the vengeance | |
of Montaperti, why dost thou molest me?" | |
And I: "My Master, now wait here for me, | |
That I through him may issue from a doubt; | |
Then thou mayst hurry me, as thou shalt wish." | |
The Leader stopped; and to that one I said | |
Who was blaspheming vehemently still: | |
"Who art thou, that thus reprehendest others?" | |
"Now who art thou, that goest through Antenora | |
Smiting," replied he, "other people's cheeks, | |
So that, if thou wert living, 'twere too much?" | |
"Living I am, and dear to thee it may be," | |
Was my response, "if thou demandest fame, | |
That 'mid the other notes thy name I place." | |
And he to me: "For the reverse I long; | |
Take thyself hence, and give me no more trouble; | |
For ill thou knowest to flatter in this hollow." | |
Then by the scalp behind I seized upon him, | |
And said: "It must needs be thou name thyself, | |
Or not a hair remain upon thee here." | |
Whence he to me: "Though thou strip off my hair, | |
I will not tell thee who I am, nor show thee, | |
If on my head a thousand times thou fall." | |
I had his hair in hand already twisted, | |
And more than one shock of it had pulled out, | |
He barking, with his eyes held firmly down, | |
When cried another: "What doth ail thee, Bocca? | |
Is't not enough to clatter with thy jaws, | |
But thou must bark? what devil touches thee?" | |
"Now," said I, "I care not to have thee speak, | |
Accursed traitor; for unto thy shame | |
I will report of thee veracious news." | |
"Begone," replied he, "and tell what thou wilt, | |
But be not silent, if thou issue hence, | |
Of him who had just now his tongue so prompt; | |
He weepeth here the silver of the French; | |
'I saw,' thus canst thou phrase it, 'him of Duera | |
There where the sinners stand out in the cold.' | |
If thou shouldst questioned be who else was there, | |
Thou hast beside thee him of Beccaria, | |
Of whom the gorget Florence slit asunder; | |
Gianni del Soldanier, I think, may be | |
Yonder with Ganellon, and Tebaldello | |
Who oped Faenza when the people slep." | |
Already we had gone away from him, | |
When I beheld two frozen in one hole, | |
So that one head a hood was to the other; | |
And even as bread through hunger is devoured, | |
The uppermost on the other set his teeth, | |
There where the brain is to the nape united. | |
Not in another fashion Tydeus gnawed | |
The temples of Menalippus in disdain, | |
Than that one did the skull and the other things. | |
"O thou, who showest by such bestial sign | |
Thy hatred against him whom thou art eating, | |
Tell me the wherefore," said I, "with this compact, | |
That if thou rightfully of him complain, | |
In knowing who ye are, and his transgression, | |
I in the world above repay thee for it, | |
If that wherewith I speak be not dried up." | |
Inferno: Canto XXXIII | |
His mouth uplifted from his grim repast, | |
That sinner, wiping it upon the hair | |
Of the same head that he behind had wasted. | |
Then he began: "Thou wilt that I renew | |
The desperate grief, which wrings my heart already | |
To think of only, ere I speak of it; | |
But if my words be seed that may bear fruit | |
Of infamy to the traitor whom I gnaw, | |
Speaking and weeping shalt thou see together. | |
I know not who thou art, nor by what mode | |
Thou hast come down here; but a Florentine | |
Thou seemest to me truly, when I hear thee. | |
Thou hast to know I was Count Ugolino, | |
And this one was Ruggieri the Archbishop; | |
Now I will tell thee why I am such a neighbour. | |
That, by effect of his malicious thoughts, | |
Trusting in him I was made prisoner, | |
And after put to death, I need not say; | |
But ne'ertheless what thou canst not have heard, | |
That is to say, how cruel was my death, | |
Hear shalt thou, and shalt know if he has wronged me. | |
A narrow perforation in the mew, | |
Which bears because of me the title of Famine, | |
And in which others still must be locked up, | |
Had shown me through its opening many moons | |
Already, when I dreamed the evil dream | |
Which of the future rent for me the veil. | |
This one appeared to me as lord and master, | |
Hunting the wolf and whelps upon the mountain | |
For which the Pisans cannot Lucca see. | |
With sleuth-hounds gaunt, and eager, and well trained, | |
Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfianchi | |
He had sent out before him to the front. | |
After brief course seemed unto me forespent | |
The father and the sons, and with sharp tushes | |
It seemed to me I saw their flanks ripped open. | |
When I before the morrow was awake, | |
Moaning amid their sleep I heard my sons | |
Who with me were, and asking after bread. | |
Cruel indeed art thou, if yet thou grieve not, | |
Thinking of what my heart foreboded me, | |
And weep'st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at? | |
They were awake now, and the hour drew nigh | |
At which our food used to be brought to us, | |
And through his dream was each one apprehensive; | |
And I heard locking up the under door | |
Of the horrible tower; whereat without a word | |
I gazed into the faces of my sons. | |
I wept not, I within so turned to stone; | |
They wept; and darling little Anselm mine | |
Said: 'Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee?' | |
Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made | |
All of that day, nor yet the night thereafter, | |
Until another sun rose on the world. | |
As now a little glimmer made its way | |
Into the dolorous prison, and I saw | |
Upon four faces my own very aspect, | |
Both of my hands in agony I bit; | |
And, thinking that I did it from desire | |
Of eating, on a sudden they uprose, | |
And said they: 'Father, much less pain 'twill give us | |
If thou do eat of us; thyself didst clothe us | |
With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off.' | |
I calmed me then, not to make them more sad. | |
That day we all were silent, and the next. | |
Ah! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open? | |
When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo | |
Threw himself down outstretched before my feet, | |
Saying, 'My father, why dost thou not help me?' | |
And there he died; and, as thou seest me, | |
I saw the three fall, one by one, between | |
The fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me, | |
Already blind, to groping over each, | |
And three days called them after they were dead; | |
Then hunger did what sorrow could not do." | |
When he had said this, with his eyes distorted, | |
The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth, | |
Which, as a dog's, upon the bone were strong. | |
Ah! Pisa, thou opprobrium of the people | |
Of the fair land there where the 'Si' doth sound, | |
Since slow to punish thee thy neighbours are, | |
Let the Capraia and Gorgona move, | |
And make a hedge across the mouth of Arno | |
That every person in thee it may drown! | |
For if Count Ugolino had the fame | |
Of having in thy castles thee betrayed, | |
Thou shouldst not on such cross have put his sons. | |
Guiltless of any crime, thou modern Thebes! | |
Their youth made Uguccione and Brigata, | |
And the other two my song doth name above! | |
We passed still farther onward, where the ice | |
Another people ruggedly enswathes, | |
Not downward turned, but all of them reversed. | |
Weeping itself there does not let them weep, | |
And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes | |
Turns itself inward to increase the anguish; | |
Because the earliest tears a cluster form, | |
And, in the manner of a crystal visor, | |
Fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow full. | |
And notwithstanding that, as in a callus, | |
Because of cold all sensibility | |
Its station had abandoned in my face, | |
Still it appeared to me I felt some wind; | |
Whence I: "My Master, who sets this in motion? | |
Is not below here every vapour quenched?" | |
Whence he to me: "Full soon shalt thou be where | |
Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this, | |
Seeing the cause which raineth down the blast." | |
And one of the wretches of the frozen crust | |
Cried out to us: "O souls so merciless | |
That the last post is given unto you, | |
Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I | |
May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart | |
A little, e'er the weeping recongeal." | |
Whence I to him: "If thou wouldst have me help thee | |
Say who thou wast; and if I free thee not, | |
May I go to the bottom of the ice." | |
Then he replied: "I am Friar Alberigo; | |
He am I of the fruit of the bad garden, | |
Who here a date am getting for my fig." | |
"O," said I to him, "now art thou, too, dead?" | |
And he to me: "How may my body fare | |
Up in the world, no knowledge I possess. | |
Such an advantage has this Ptolomaea, | |
That oftentimes the soul descendeth here | |
Sooner than Atropos in motion sets it. | |
And, that thou mayest more willingly remove | |
From off my countenance these glassy tears, | |
Know that as soon as any soul betrays | |
As I have done, his body by a demon | |
Is taken from him, who thereafter rules it, | |
Until his time has wholly been revolved. | |
Itself down rushes into such a cistern; | |
And still perchance above appears the body | |
Of yonder shade, that winters here behind me. | |
This thou shouldst know, if thou hast just come down; | |
It is Ser Branca d' Oria, and many years | |
Have passed away since he was thus locked up." | |
"I think," said I to him, "thou dost deceive me; | |
For Branca d' Oria is not dead as yet, | |
And eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes." | |
"In moat above," said he, "of Malebranche, | |
There where is boiling the tenacious pitch, | |
As yet had Michel Zanche not arrived, | |
When this one left a devil in his stead | |
In his own body and one near of kin, | |
Who made together with him the betrayal. | |
But hitherward stretch out thy hand forthwith, | |
Open mine eyes;"--and open them I did not, | |
And to be rude to him was courtesy. | |
Ah, Genoese! ye men at variance | |
With every virtue, full of every vice | |
Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world? | |
For with the vilest spirit of Romagna | |
I found of you one such, who for his deeds | |
In soul already in Cocytus bathes, | |
And still above in body seems alive! | |
Inferno: Canto XXXIV | |
"'Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni' | |
Towards us; therefore look in front of thee," | |
My Master said, "if thou discernest him." | |
As, when there breathes a heavy fog, or when | |
Our hemisphere is darkening into night, | |
Appears far off a mill the wind is turning, | |
Methought that such a building then I saw; | |
And, for the wind, I drew myself behind | |
My Guide, because there was no other shelter. | |
Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it, | |
There where the shades were wholly covered up, | |
And glimmered through like unto straws in glass. | |
Some prone are lying, others stand erect, | |
This with the head, and that one with the soles; | |
Another, bow-like, face to feet inverts. | |
When in advance so far we had proceeded, | |
That it my Master pleased to show to me | |
The creature who once had the beauteous semblance, | |
He from before me moved and made me stop, | |
Saying: "Behold Dis, and behold the place | |
Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself." | |
How frozen I became and powerless then, | |
Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not, | |
Because all language would be insufficient. | |
I did not die, and I alive remained not; | |
Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit, | |
What I became, being of both deprived. | |
The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous | |
From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice; | |
And better with a giant I compare | |
Than do the giants with those arms of his; | |
Consider now how great must be that whole, | |
Which unto such a part conforms itself. | |
Were he as fair once, as he now is foul, | |
And lifted up his brow against his Maker, | |
Well may proceed from him all tribulation. | |
O, what a marvel it appeared to me, | |
When I beheld three faces on his head! | |
The one in front, and that vermilion was; | |
Two were the others, that were joined with this | |
Above the middle part of either shoulder, | |
And they were joined together at the crest; | |
And the right-hand one seemed 'twixt white and yellow; | |
The left was such to look upon as those | |
Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward. | |
Underneath each came forth two mighty wings, | |
Such as befitting were so great a bird; | |
Sails of the sea I never saw so large. | |
No feathers had they, but as of a bat | |
Their fashion was; and he was waving them, | |
So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom. | |
Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed. | |
With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins | |
Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel. | |
At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching | |
A sinner, in the manner of a brake, | |
So that he three of them tormented thus. | |
To him in front the biting was as naught | |
Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine | |
Utterly stripped of all the skin remained. | |
"That soul up there which has the greatest pain," | |
The Master said, "is Judas Iscariot; | |
With head inside, he plies his legs without. | |
Of the two others, who head downward are, | |
The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus; | |
See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word. | |
And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius. | |
But night is reascending, and 'tis time | |
That we depart, for we have seen the whole." | |
As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck, | |
And he the vantage seized of time and place, | |
And when the wings were opened wide apart, | |
He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides; | |
From fell to fell descended downward then | |
Between the thick hair and the frozen crust. | |
When we were come to where the thigh revolves | |
Exactly on the thickness of the haunch, | |
The Guide, with labour and with hard-drawn breath, | |
Turned round his head where he had had his legs, | |
And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts, | |
So that to Hell I thought we were returning. | |
"Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these," | |
The Master said, panting as one fatigued, | |
"Must we perforce depart from so much evil." | |
Then through the opening of a rock he issued, | |
And down upon the margin seated me; | |
Then tow'rds me he outstretched his wary step. | |
I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see | |
Lucifer in the same way I had left him; | |
And I beheld him upward hold his legs. | |
And if I then became disquieted, | |
Let stolid people think who do not see | |
What the point is beyond which I had passed. | |
"Rise up," the Master said, "upon thy feet; | |
The way is long, and difficult the road, | |
And now the sun to middle-tierce returns." | |
It was not any palace corridor | |
There where we were, but dungeon natural, | |
With floor uneven and unease of light. | |
"Ere from the abyss I tear myself away, | |
My Master," said I when I had arisen, | |
"To draw me from an error speak a little; | |
Where is the ice? and how is this one fixed | |
Thus upside down? and how in such short time | |
From eve to morn has the sun made his transit?" | |
And he to me: "Thou still imaginest | |
Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped | |
The hair of the fell worm, who mines the world. | |
That side thou wast, so long as I descended; | |
When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point | |
To which things heavy draw from every side, | |
And now beneath the hemisphere art come | |
Opposite that which overhangs the vast | |
Dry-land, and 'neath whose cope was put to death | |
The Man who without sin was born and lived. | |
Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere | |
Which makes the other face of the Judecca. | |
Here it is morn when it is evening there; | |
And he who with his hair a stairway made us | |
Still fixed remaineth as he was before. | |
Upon this side he fell down out of heaven; | |
And all the land, that whilom here emerged, | |
For fear of him made of the sea a veil, | |
And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure | |
To flee from him, what on this side appears | |
Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled." | |
A place there is below, from Beelzebub | |
As far receding as the tomb extends, | |
Which not by sight is known, but by the sound | |
Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth | |
Through chasm within the stone, which it has gnawed | |
With course that winds about and slightly falls. | |
The Guide and I into that hidden road | |
Now entered, to return to the bright world; | |
And without care of having any rest | |
We mounted up, he first and I the second, | |
Till I beheld through a round aperture | |
Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear; | |
Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars. | |
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Divine Comedy, Longfellow's | |
Translation, Hell, by Dante Alighieri | |
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