Canto XXIV He said: "For fit request a fit reply But as some demon-haunted soul may fall "Who art thou?" asked my guide, and answered he: I answered: "Though thy bestial crimes to hell Canto XXV But while we looked, with sudden haste he fled, Then said my Master, "Cacus here we see, On rushed the Centaur in his haste to seize The copulating smoke around them spread. Canto XXVI This marvel of the moving flames to see, "Master, a truth already guessed aright He answered, "Twain are in that flame; they run "Master," I answered, "if they be not dumb Canto XXVII "I died, and to St. Francis' care consigned "I turned, and one of Hell's Black Cherubim We left him wailing, and the writhing flame Canto XXVIII If all who in Apulia's fatal land I answered curtly, "And your race has died." "Thou living, who dost view the grievous dead, Canto XXIX My Master answered, "Waste no thought thereon, I think not that Ægina's ancient woe We went in silence, watching men too sick At that they raised themselves apart, and turned My leader's kindness gave the speech to me, - Canto XXX He said, "O ye, no penal fate who earn The dropsied answered, "That on earth I burnt He answered, "If I lied, thy trade could still While they jarred When his anger showed Canto XXXI No earthquake sways a massive tower as then Canto XXXII He answered, "Though the final hair ye pick, Canto XXXIII "It seemed that on the Pisan hills was I, "Ha!" said I, "hast thou also left the quick "Where boils the pitch, ere Michel Zanche came, Ah, men corrupt from God! Ye Genoese, Canto XXXIV Beneath our feet - but memory fears to tell -
IN that young month of the returning year
When, in Aquarius placed, the mounting
Shakes loose his hair a bolder course to run,
The hoarfrost takes his sister's face of fear,
A moment only. Then the husbandman,
As wanes the night before the equal day,
Looks forth, a world of winter-white to scan,
And knows the frugal store of roots and hay
Is ended, and laments, and smites his thigh,
And through the house as one distraught he goes;
But shortly forth again he looks, and knows
The world has changed its face, and cheerily
Takes crook, and chases out his flock to feed.
So I, that did my Master's anger heed,
Awhile was daunted, till we came to where
That tumbled ruin through the somber air
Rose darkly, when he turned with smile as sweet
As on that mountain when he stayed my feet
At our first meeting.
Careful glance he cast
Along the huge mound of the broken rock,
And then as one who picks his point at last,
And doubts no more, from block to tumbled
He led me upward, with a reaching arm,
And voice that warned my blinder steps. No way
Was this for those of golden cloaks to flee,
That scarcely for his lighter frame, or me
His arm sustained, a trembling hold supplied;
And but that to the lower bank we strained
(For Malebolge to the central pit
Inward and downward slopes from every side),
I know not if my guide the crest had gained,
But sure I had not.
When my feet attained
The last rent fissure, the projecting stone
With failing strength I grasped, and reaching it,
My breath drained from me by that toil, to sit
Some space I thought, but while I sank he said:
"Thou must not rest thee here, but here and now
Make conquest of thy sloth, for while abed,
Forgetful of the hours, warm-blanketed,
Men rest, or sitting loose at ease, they find
No fame, but life consumes, they watch not how;
As foam on water, or as smoke in air,
A moment passes, and it is not there.
Arise! and with thy spirit's strength contend
Against the flesh that drags thee. Thus shall end
Revolt, except the ignoble soul allow
The body's weight to sink it. Not enough
Is wrought that thus the deeper trench we quit.
Be thine to comprehend, and with the wit
The will for action."
Narrow, steep and rough,
Yet rose the path across the ridge that led,
But shamed to hear my leader's words I feigned
A strength I had not. "In thy steps," I said,
"I follow, confident," and further speech
I made, the while the rampart's crest we gained,
To hide my faintness from myself. Thereat
A voice made answer from the further deep,
Bestial, and formless of clear words to reach
The hearer's mind, but not this loss forgat
The notes of wrath.
Above the further steep
Now stood we, but my living sight was vain
To pierce the blackness whence that awful cry
Reproached me.
"Master, while we here remain.
I hear, but nought it means, and nought I see
Down-gazing. Wilt thou that the further wall
We gain, and climbing by the shorter fall,
Perchance in safety our descents repeat?"
Is action only." Leading silently,
He crossed the bridge, and on the eighth surround
A vantage of sufficient sight I found
That showed the seventh and more dreadful woe
Than those behind. For serpents here I saw
Hideous and frightful in their throngs, as though
All Libya and the red Egyptian sea
Had swarmed them. While I write my heart at war
With recollection backward holds my blood,
Shuddering. For not the Libyan sands shall be,
Nor all the plagues of the Egyptian flood,
Nor all that Ethiopia spawns, alike
Prolific. Not the crested water-snake,
The cobra, nor the leaping jaculus,
The speckled death, the serpent formed to strike
From either end, such horror holds.
I saw
A people naked, with no hole to take
For refuge, blindly in their fear that ran
Amidst this ruthless and appalling throng.
O for the spotted heliotrope I that thus
They might escape unseen. But not this law
Could charms resist. To snakes their hands belong
Snakes through their loins are pierced. I watched a man
Against whose throat a sudden serpent bit,
More swiftly than the shortest word is writ
Take fire, and burn, and in his place there came
A little heap of ashes. As the flame
In cinders sank, a sight most marvellous
Was mine - the calcined heap reversed the wrong,
Arising to its human form. 'Tis said
The Phoenix thus, on tears of incense fed,
That eats no herb, or any coarser bread,
With each five hundred years is purified,
And rises thence as though it had not died,
From its own ash again incarnated.
Unconscious, writhing, nor the fit recall,
But weak and pallid to his feet again
He struggles dumbly in bewildered pain,
So looked the sinner. What scale of Heaven was here
To weight a doom so dreadful, so severe?
"A short while since I rained from Tuscany
To this ferocious gutter. A life more beast
Than human pleased me there. Pistoia well
My savage carnal ways, till here I fell,
Denned, native, Vanni Fucci, mule, am I."
Have flung thee rightly, yet I rede not well
Why to this lower depth thou cam'st?"
And he
Feigned not to hear, but in a dismal shame
Gazed blankly upward, till constrained he said,
"Not for those crimes of loud repute I came
To this relentless doom. Reluctfully
It wrenches all my heart with grief to say
My guilt - more bitter than when first the dead
I joined, and Minos cast me here. My sin
Was this, that having robbed the sacristry
I spake not, while Rampino tortured lay,
And della Nona died, a guilt to pay
Which was not theirs. For that false crime herein
The serpents take me at their lust - but thou
Shalt go not backward with light heart to tell
My townsmen of this hidden infamy,
Nor joy to watch me in this pass - I see
A thing that cometh on earth. Short year from now
Thy part shall from my native place expel
The Neri, and their wealth shall confiscate.
But then shall Florence cleanse her lawless state;
Thy faction, outcast from her palaces,
Shall suffer all they gave, till Mars shall bring
A flaming vapour of such fierce disease
From Val di Magra, that the trembling knees
Of each Bianco on Piceno's plain
Shall bleeding bow. I would not tell this thing
Could any prescience on thy part restrain
The sorrow for thee which my heart foresees."
HIS words he ended, and his bestial mind
Reverted to its impious use. He raised
Both hands in gestures of obscenity
Against the Eternal, till my heart inclined
To bless the serpents. One, that leapt behind
Just as he shouted, "Take it, God! at Thee
I aim it," twisted round his throat, to bind
His further utterance. One, his arms about,
Its tightening knots o'er wrists and elbows twined
To cease his antics. Ah, Pistoia! why
Dost never, when thy bitter factions burn
Their foemen's houses, and are sacked in turn,
The whole send upward to the cleansing sky
In one consuming? since thy sons exceed
The first corruptions of the godless seed
That built thee. All the infernal depths I trod
Revealed no shade with such contempt for God.
And past us raced a Centaur-shape who said,
"Where hides the snarling thief I seek?"
I know
Maremma, nor believe its fens could show
So numerous snakes as round his haunches hung
And twisted in their wrath, and thereamong,
Even to the human part, behind his head
A fiery dragon broods with wings outspread,
That burn, and render all they reach to flame.
Who made of old beneath Mount Aventine
Beneath his brethren, for the theft of shame
A lake of blood. To this great depth he came,
That there he wrought. He ceased his perfidy,
Taught by the raining blows of Hercules, -
A hundred mashed him, though he felt but ten."
The fleeing shade, and while we gazed ahead
We saw not that beneath there came three men
That watched us, till they cried, "Who are ye there?"
Whereat the Centaur left our thoughts, and these
Possessed them. One man to his neighbour said,
"Why tarries Cianfa?" By that word aware
Of those that faced me, to my guide I signed
Desire for silence.
Reader, if this tale
Thy mind reject, I blame thee nought, for I
Look back, and memory here and credence find
Dispute. A monster with a serpent's tail,
And with six feet along the ground that ran,
Made halt before the three, and picked a man,
And leapt upon him. No clinging ivies twine
So closely. In his face its teeth it set.
Its forward feet behind his shoulders met.
Its belly on his belly pressed. Its feet
Strained to his sides and thighs, to backward meet.
Its tail between his legs, along his spine
Curled upwards. As a lighted paper burns
And blackens, but at first to brown it turns
Before the flames have reached it, so did they
Transform and blend, until you might not say
The serpent-hue was that, or this was man,
And then, as melted wax, their forms began
To merge and mingle. Cried his comrades, "Lo,
Where art - what art - which art thou, Agnello?
Art both or neither?" The two heads by now
Were one. The bodies were a monstrous sight.
A man was snake: a reptile walked upright.
With dragging steps it left us.
Hast thou seen
The lizards changing hedge? From side to side
They cross the sun-glare of the roadway wide
A baffling streak. So fast a reptile shot
Toward these two remaining. Smoking hot,
And black as peppercorn it showed. It leapt
And pierced the navel of the one. It stept
Some paces back, and crouched, and watched. Its eyes
Its victim held, and he with dull surprise
Yawning, as one by sleep or fever dazed,
No motion made to fly, but backward gazed
Tranced. From the reptile's mouth, the navel's hole,
There came two smokes that feeling through the air
Were joined. The serpent and the human soul
In this conjunction stayed. Let Lucan prate
No more the horror of Nasidius' fate,
Nor how Sabellus failed from sight. I bear
No envy to the tales that Ovid made
Of Cadmus to a serpent changed, or how
Sad Arethusa is a fountain now.
They did not dream the thing I saw. The shade
That once was man his dreadful doom obeyed.
He closed his feet. His legs and thighs as one
Were blended. All that to his form was done
The snake reversed. Its tail it cleft. The skin
On the divided parts I saw begin
To shed its scales and soften; while the man
Acquiring that the snake had lost, began
lo alter snakelike his retractile limb.
Lengthened the worm's short arms: the arms of him
Shortened and scaled. The man's fifth member then
Lengthened and slit, the worm's hind legs to match.
The worm's hind legs their shrinking claws attach,
And blend to form the part concealed of men.
The man grew bald. The needed hair was bred
Upon the snake's transforming parts. His head
The foul beast lifted, and arose upright.
The man fell prostrate. But the thievish light
Still kindled in their baleful eyes, the while
Their faces altered, and the shape erect,
- For which was human? - their completed guile
In altered visage showed. Its jaws withdrew.
A nose and lips it formed, and ears outgrew.
The while that other on the ground that lay,
Forked its thin tongue, and turned, and crawled away.
And like a snail that hides its horns, I saw
The ears receding in the serpent head.
Loud hissing down the dismal trench it sped,
And after ran the worm transformed, and tried
A sputtering speech.
But scarce my mind could think
Clear thought, or eyes see clearly, while the law
That ruled the refuse of this hateful sink
Changed and rechanged them. Yet I marked the last
Of those three shades, that slyly shrank aside,
Desirous only from my glance to hide, -
Puccio Sciancato. Him the serpents passed
Without molesting while I stayed. The one
I saw transformed was he for whom Gaville
Yet wails the vengeance that it cowered to feel,
Because his murder in its streets was done.
REJOICE, my Florence I that thy lifted wings
Not only in the world's wide sunlight shine,
Not only o'er the waves of ocean beat;
In Hell's deep vaults an equal fame is thine.
Five thieves, - and every thief a Florentine!
So thought I grimly, as we turned to meet
The cliff's ascent. But if the morning brings
The mind God's counsel, if its dreams be true,
Then that dark end desired of Prato's hate,
And all thy sullen, greedful foes, for you
Comes quickly. Not that were today the date
It were too soon for those who love thee. Yea,
I would that that which cometh came today.
For grief that on my weaker age shall weigh
Were now less dreadful.
Rough the rising stair
That hard we clomb with foot and hand and knee,
And very silent all, and lonely there,
The ridge we crossed a keener grief to see.
Grief were it to gaze, and still that grief to me
Comes sharply, as my thoughts reluctant draw
Their wells of memory for the thing I saw.
With pain I speak, for if the holier law
Myself I hold, by any kindly star,
Or Power supernal, guided safely through
The world's stretched snares, I would not boast nor tell
As one who triumphs, that these depths of Hell
Contain such fruitage of our kind.
The view
Beneath us was an empty depth, wherethrough
Lights moved, abundant as the fireflies are
At even, when the gnats succeed the flies.
A myriad gleams the labourer sees who lies
Above them, resting, while the vale below
Already darkens to the night, - he toiled
From dawn to store the ripened grapes, or till
The roots around, and on the shadowing hill
Reclines and gazes down the vale. As he,
Whose mockers felt the she-bears' teeth, beheld
The chariot-horses rise erect to reach
The heavens of air, with searching eyes could see
At last, a little climbing flame afar,
That faded, cloudlike, as the fiery car
Ascended past his mortal sight, so here
Along the gutter of the fosse there came,
And passed, and left us, many a roving flame,
That seemed flame only, yet a human soul
Held each, but hid from sight the thief it stole.
I stretched from off the bridge so eagerly
I slipped, and falling grasped a rocky spar,
Alone that saved me from that depth. My guide
The answer to my eager search supplied.
"Within those moving flames the tortured are.
Each in his garment wraps himself from sight."
Thy word makes surer. Much I long to know
What spirit swathed in that wide fire doth go,
That flickers upward in two flames, as though
It rose combined from that reluctant pyre
Where, with his brother, burnt Eteocles,
To form two pillars of divided fire,
Because no death could quench their enmities?"
Together now because they sinned as one.
Ulysses tortured there, and Diomed,
Repent the treason of the horse, that led
To Rome's foundation - through the fated door
The exiles issuing; and the trick lament
Through which still weeps in death Deidamia
For her lost Achilles; and furthermore
They suffer for the thieved Palladium."
With so much anguish, let them speak, I pray,
- A thousand prayers I pray thee! - Grant we stay
Till that horned flame come hither! You see me bend
Almost to falling with desire."
He said:
"Thy prayer is praise to him that prays it. Yea;
I grant; but hearken. When they pass below
Keep silent. Thee they might disdain, but I
Will ask thy purpose."
When they came more nigh,
He hailed them. "Ye who from one fire ascend
A twofold flame, I charge ye, if ye owe
A quittance to me for the lofty lay
Wherein I praised your earthly fames, I pray
That here ye pause, the while that one shall say
Of where at last he wandered forth to die."
At this was shaking of the greater horn,
And murmurs not at first articulate, -
A flame that by the wind is trailed and torn
To flickers, - till the end made animate
Wagged like a tongue, and answered, -
"When I turned
Aside from Circe's later lure, and left
The mount that Æneas named, my heart forgot
My aged father, I regarded not
My fondness for my child, my wife bereft
Of her due rights of love, but through my heart
Again the unconquerable ardour burned
To search experience of the world, anew
The vice and valour of mankind to view,
And seek the events of lonely lands apart
From known adventures of my race. I chose
One ship, and with a little band of those
With heart to follow, steered for open sea,
And left behind the morning.
Either shore,
Spain and Morocco saw we, and between
Sardinia and the isles. At length was seen
That narrow passage of the meeting seas,
Whereat the warning stands of Hercules
That no man dare to pass it. Old were we,
Myself and my companions, old and slow,
When Ceuta lay behind us, and Seville
Was fading on the right, and westward still
We pointed.
"Brothers," to the rest I said,
"O brothers, following where my star hath led,
That not a thousand shapes of pain could dread
From this so great adventure. Hear me now.
Deny not that we add to all our gains,
While the brief vigil hour of life remains,
Experience of the unpeopled world that lies
Behind the lights of sunset. Think ye now,
We are not fashioned as the brute that dies,
But born for virtue and exploit."
Thereat
Such ardour waked that had I sought to stay
I scarce had ruled them. Still the moving poop
Looked back, and left the dawn. A southward loop
We sailed, still bending to the left, the while
We laboured weakly at the oars, and mile
To foolish mile extended, till we moved
Beneath strange stars in unacquainted skies.
Five times the bright bowl of the moon had filled,
Five times through heaven its silver light had spilled,
When as we toiled that silent waste of way,
A mountain, drear and vast, in distance lay.
A mountain of such height and magnitude
As all my wandering life I had not viewed:
But short was our rejoicing. From the land
A tempest smote us. Thrice the beaten prow
Whirled round with all its waters: either hand
The rising waves assailed our decks, and now
The bows tossed upwards, now the poop, for He
At last had spoken. Overwhelmed were we;
And closed again the solitary sea."
THE flame was silent, and erect and still
Moved from us with my leader's leave.
There came
Behind another and more restless flame
That strove for speech, and found its thwarted will
Gave only noise of whistling sounds, until
The words worked upward through the fire, as erst
The tyrant heard the brass Sicilian bull, -
That justly for its roasting victim first
He filled with its designer, - turn his cries
To bull-like bellowing. So the cunning file
Had tuned its throat.
But now the call he tries,
Vibrating upward to the tongue's intent,
Sounds clearer. "Thou - O dear and wonderful! -
Who bringest that loved speech of Lombardy,
Thou whose familiar words to him that went,
'Go now, I urge no further,' called me on,
Though late, to plead thy patience. Pause, I pray,
Some longer space. Although so wrapt, to me
It irks not if I hear thee. This blind way
We burn, but may not lighted, if ye fell
But lately from the Latian land, from where
The endless burden of my guilt I bear,
If peace is on Romagna, wilt thou tell?
For I was native of the mountains there
Between Urbino and the heights from whence
The Tiber rises."
Still I downward bent,
And leant far outward in my eagerness,
Whereat my Leader, from my fixed intent
To call me, touched me on the side, and said,
"Speak thou, - is here no Greek's impertinence
To scorn thee."
I thereat, who willed no less,
Spake swiftly, "O sad spirit, so garmented
In flame no glance can reach thee, still thy land
Hath tyrants, in their hearts devising war,
But nought of open strife I lately saw,
And still within its ancient walls doth stand
The strength of thy Ravenna. Still doth brood
Polenta's eagle, and his pinions spread
Above its roofs, and Cervia's. Forli now,
Its siege and slaughter of its foes forgot,
The Green Claws hold anew. Verrucchio
Hath still its mastiff, and his young, who show
The teeth that tore Montagna. Still doth plot
The little lion in his lair of snow
To friend both factions, and his rule admit
Lamone's and Santerno's towns. That one
Constricted in its narrow space that lies
Between the mountains and the Savio,
So between tyrant rule and freedom won
Alternates. As I answer all, for it
Requite me. Tell me, as I half surmise,
Who wast thou? Tell me all thy tale, that so
Thy name on earth shall stablish."
Then the flame
Roared without speech awhile, but in the end
The flickering point gave utterance. "If ye came
To count our tortures, and to earth ascend
To tell them, nothing would ye hear from me,
For all your pleading. But I know too well
There is no issue from this depth of Hell
For those who enter. With no fear of shame
I tell thee. By the sword I lived. Amend
To Heaven I schemed, and took St. Francis' cord
Not vainly, and my hope had fruited well,
But evil take the false Pope Boniface!
Who led me to my earlier sins. The sword
I lived by, but my deeds from infancy
The fox's wiles and shifts and secret shame
Had practised, till my cunning crafts became
A byword through the earth for perfidy.
When to the age I came at which mankind
Should turn the haven of the soul to find
From voyaging on life's alluring sea,
Drop sails and wind their idle ropes, and so
Pass inward on the tide with steerage slow,
Then was I grieved for all my boast before,
And with repentance wept, - alas, the woe!
It might have saved me.
Through this cord I wore
I served the Chief Priest of the Pharisees,
Who warred, - but not with Jews, and not with those
Who conquered Acre. Nor his Christian foes
Were merchants in the Soldan's land who dwelt,
But in the precincts of the Lateran
Christ's priest the Christian who beside him dwelt
Distressed with violence. Not his vows, nor dread
Of his high office as the Church's Head,
Nor reverence for my cord, that used to make
The wearers leaner, stayed him. Constantine
So called Silvestro from Soracte's cave
To cure him leprous, as this godless man
Besought my counsel. As a fool may rave
In drunken pride I thought him. Word of mine
He got not to inspire his guilt. At last
He urged me, 'Doubt not that thy choice be cast
With wisdom, if thou do the thing I bid.
I do absolve and bless thee even now
Before the words have passed thy lips. Do thou
Contrive that I shall gain Penestrino.
Forget not I can open or forbid
The Eternal Gate. The Keys that Celestine
So lightly loosed are twain.
Alike of Heaven and Hell.'
He urged me thus
Till speech than silence seemed less dangerous,
Whereon I answered, 'Father, since my guilt
Thou cleanest ere I tell thee. If thou wilt,
In one way canst thou triumph - all they will
In solemn treaty seal, - and nought fulfil.'
My parting spirit, but there came behind
A shape that seized me by the hair, and cried
Against my Patron, 'Make no claim for him.
'Tis he who gave the counsel fraudulent.
I have not left him since. Can man repent
The while he sins? The contradiction here
Defies thy rescue, and the guilt is clear.'
Leered back. 'Thou didst not think with all thy craft
I studied logic in the schools?' he laughed.
He bore me down to Minos' seat, and he
Eight times his tail around his fearful back
Entwined, and gnawed it in his rage, and said
'Is here a sinner for the depths,' and me
He bade them fling to where I should not lack
My like, 'Down-cast him to the thievish fire
That hides its victims in its fold,' and so
For ever in this robe of pain I go;
My craft, that to my safe repentance led,
- That craft betrayed me to a fate so dire."
Tossed its sharp horn for further speech, but we
No longer paused, but upward climbed, and came
To that next arch which spans a baser woe.
For suffering here were those who wrought to sow
Dissension - guilt the fruit, and here the fee.
WHO in free words, without restraint or bar
Of formal beauty in their choice, could say
The things I saw? Repeat a different way
A hundred times, and what those tortures are
It tells not. Words are lacked. The mind of man
Such horror hates. It shrinks to comprehend
Such slaughterous sights as here around us ran.
Bewailed the bloodshed of their violent end
Beneath the merciless Roman sword, - if they
Who died in that long Punic war, which gave
Even of the rings they wore so vast a prey, -
If those who felt the weight of Guiscard's glaive, -
With those who perished in the fatal band
The false Apulians to their fate betrayed,
Whose bones at Ceperano heap, - with all
Alardo's craft at Tagliacozzo made
Without resort of weaponed strife to fall, -
Were gathered in one place and each displayed
The shredded limbs, the ghastly wounds of war,
Nought were it to the dreadful mode I saw
In this ninth chasm.
A man beneath us stood
Whose body like a cantless cask was split.
The staves bulge outward. Through the bursting wood
It pours its contents. So the open slit
That cleft him, fore and hind, from neck to thigh,
Poured out; between his legs his entrails hung.
He thrust his hands his heart and lungs among,
And cried against us, "See Mahomet's pride!
Or see where Ali weeping walks beside,
Cleft down the face in twain from hair to chin.
Scandal or schism has each man sown as I.
For discord are we sliced who walk herein.
A devil waits us in our turn. For while
We stumble in our wounds, with every mile
The torment heals us, till again we reach
The place we were, and with his sword to each
He gives the slitting which we felt before. -
But who are ye who with no falling gore
So calmly view us? Do ye seek delay
To shun the purpose of the guilty way?"
My Master answered, "Death he hath not known,
Nor guilt unpurged the downward path hath shown
To whom I lead, but full experience
To gain, he goeth through evil's last defence
From cycle down to cycle: this is true
As here I stand and speak, who like to you
Have all my deeds behind me."
At this word
Such wonder stirred the trench, that those who heard
A moment of their torment lost, and stayed
Oblivious of their gaping wounds. I made
The count of twice a hundred.
"Thou canst tell
Dolcino, if his waiting place in hell
He hath no haste for, that the Novarese
May win by starving whom they may not seize
By any sword-craft. Let him arm him well
With store of victuals ere the snow make blind
The mountain ways."
So spake Mahomet, the while
He stood with one leg lifted, to beguile
The demon that he moved.
A shade behind,
Noseless, with one ear only, and his throat
Slit open, through the red gash spake, "O thou!
Guiltless, who on the Latian ground ere now
Hast met me, save resemblance lead astray,
Remember Piero, if the backward way,
To reach the sunlight of the world, thy fate
Permit thee, if thy living feet regain
Mine own dear country where the gentle plain
Slopes downward to Vercelli, wilt thou tell
The noblest two in Fano's walls that dwell,
Cassero and Cagnano, that except
Our foresight fail us here, that lord adept
At violence and unfaith shall both betray,
Cast from their barque in Cattolica bay,
Sack-sewn and weighted? He that hath one eye,
And holds that land that one who here doth lie
Had better never in his life have seen,
Will bring them there to treaty, and thereby
So act that caution of Fecara's squalls
Will aid them nought. Such deed there hath not been
In Neptune's sight: he hath more hope who falls
To Argives or to pirates."
I replied,
"Your speech resists me. Show me first aright
Who with thee here laments that bitter sight,
That I may bear thy tale aloft."
He gripped
A comrade by the jaw. "This shade dumb-lipped
Was Curio once, with wagging tongue that lied
To cease the doubt in Cæsar. 'All delay
To men prepared is harmful!' urged he then.
Now walks he round to reach the place again
Where waits the slaughtering demon."
Sick dismay
Was on the face that once so glibly spake,
And tongue slit backward to the throat I saw
That once had gibed the dreadful cast of war.
Now moved he on, his endless turn to take
Prepared for that which did not grant delay.
But one whose either hand was sliced away,
Raised in the dusk the bleeding stumps until
The blood fell backward on his face, and cried
"Forget not Mosca! 'Ere ye counsel, kill;
Death's logic brief will save long argument.
The wrought deed prospers!' - So I urged. Ah me!
It bore a bitter seed for Tuscany."
Whereat as one distraught with pain he went
Lamenting doubly.
Still I watched beside
The moving troops, and here a thing I saw
Divorced from reason. All our natural law
Denies it. Only mine integrity
To write such proofless words gives confidence.
But this I saw, and still in mind I see, -
A headless trunk that walked. Beside his knee
He swung his own head by the hair, as though
He bore a lantern for his feet to go
Unstumbling in the darkness. No pretence
Of explanation mine. What God ordains
The wise man marvels, and the fool explains.
The sharp eyes marked us, and a startled O!
Broke from the lips, and when the trunk below
Came level where we paused, the arm on high
Lifted the head to bring its words more nigh.
Is any doom so great as mine," it said,
"In all Hell's circles? That De Born am I
Who gave my prince the evil counselling
Which caused him, rebel to the elder king,
Against his sire to war. Ahithophel
So worked with David and with Absalom.
Because I parted father and child, in Hell
My root of being finds the brain therefrom
Disparted. So the Eternal Justice wills."
THE numerous people, and the diverse ills
That slit them in a hundred forms, had made
Mine eyes so salted, that awhile I stayed
Content with weeping, till my wiser guide
Reproached me. "Wherefore is thy sight delayed
Amidst the dismal demon-hacked so long?
Thou didst not linger at superior wrong
In higher pits so fainly. Wouldst thou guess
The numbers whom discordant wounds distress,
Consider two and twenty miles complete
The narrowing circuit that we cross. But now
The moon has passed beneath us. Short allow
Remains, before the time conceded ends,
And far beyond this gloom the realm extends
That waits thee."
"Master," I replied, "if thou
Hadst heeded that which drew my gaze, thy feet
Had stayed beside me." But he pressed ahead
The while I answered, that the words I said
Were called behind him as we moved.
"Within
That cavern where I gazed so fixed, I saw
A kinsman who bewailed the dreadful law
That prices in such coin his earthly sin."
Mine eyes observed him whilst thine own were set
Too firmly on De Born to heed. He made
A gesture fierce with hate. They called him here
Geri del Bello."
"O my Guide! the debt
He left of honour, which his partners yet,
Who shared his shame, have venged not, so betrayed
His heart to indignation. More for that
My pity meets him."
While we spake, he led
Across the ridgeway to the final tier
Of ordered suffering. Far beneath us spread,
Hid only by the dimness, wide and Hat,
The last sad cloister of the damned.
If sight
Came slowly in the gloom, it did not hide
The sounds of their lamenting. Every cry
Was like a shaft that pierced me, fledged for flight
With pity. Thousand were the woes that cried
In different accents, till my hands I pressed
Against my ears to still them.
If the ills
Of Valdichiana, when the autumn fills
Its lazars, with Maremma's sick should lie,
And all Sardinia's in one ditch, so high,
So foul, the putrid stench might reach.
We left
The last span of the bridge's long descent
To take the intersecting wall. We went
Left-hand, as always. As we climbed more low
The thick malignant air sufficed to show
How the infallible Justice of God contrives
The doom of those who use their earthly lives
To give the face of truth to falsity.
More bitter evil in its course could show,
Though groaning in an air so pestilent
All creatures, even the fluttering insect, fell,
Till all of human kind, as sages tell,
Had perished, once again to multiply
From seeds of ants.
Along a trench we went
Where spirits in disordered heaps were thrown
And languished. This upon the belly lay,
That on the back, of him beneath. Alone
Another wriggled down the dismal way.
To lift their bodies as we came, and heard
Their plaints unceasing. Two there were that leant
Against each other, as two pans are propt
For warming, on the hearth; and each so thick
Was scabbed, that horse-boy never yet so quick
Plied comb the while his master called, as they
Scraped with their nails the itching scales away,
That like the scales of bream around them dropt,
When the knife cleans it.
To the first his word
My guide addressed. "O thou whose nails so fast
Now shred thy mail, and now as pincers work,
If any Latians in this trench are cast
I pray thee tell, and may thy fingers last
Sufficient for thy needs eternally!"
The leper answered, "Latians both are we
Who weep this torment. Tell me whom I see
That so can walk untortured?"
He replied,
"One am I that High Heaven hath sent to guide
This other through the trenches ploughed in Hell.
To gaze upon me. Others near, who learned
The meaning of my Master's words, alike
Their trembling bodies lifted up to see.
"Ask that thou wilt," and by this leave I said,
"So that thy memory may not steal away
From our first world for many suns to be,
Let not disgust at thy sin's penalty
Restrain thee from the telling."
He replied,
"I was Arezzo-born, and burned alive
(Albero da Siena's false contrive
Condemned me); not for that for which I died
Ye see me here. There is no doubt I said,
Too lightly, man could raise himself in flight
By arts I knew, and in his foolishness
He willed that I should teach him. This I tried,
And failed, whereon the woud-be Dædalus
Invoked his sire to burn me. None the less
This depth I found, by Minos judged aright,
Who errs not ever, and flung me downward thus
To this tenth blackness, for the alchemy
I practised."
"Surely," to my guide I said,
"There is no people of such vanity,
Not even the French, as are the Sienese."
Whereat the second of the leprous dead
Made answer, "Save the Stricca, who contrived
Such modest spending, or the youth who thrived
On his new cookery of the clove; or they
Who aided Caccia's haste to cast away
Forest and vineyard: - but that thou mayst know
Who thus gibes with thee at the Sienese,
Look closely, that mine altered face may show.
I am the shadow of Capocchio
Who made false metals by mine alchemies.
If whom I think thou art, thyself couldst tell
If false I coined, I coined that falsehood well."
WHEN Juno's hate, enwrathed for Semele,
Repeated evils on the Theban blood,
Athamas to such madness sank that he,
Who saw his wife approach, each burdened arm
Bearing a son, cried out, "The nets we spread.
We take the lioness and her cubs!" and so
With pitiless claws he dashed the elder dead,
Whereat she leapt, still burdened, to the flood,
And drowned that other, and herself. And when
The Trojans' heavenward pride was cast so low
That king and kingdom ceased, Hecuba then
Saw Polyxena slain, and on the sand
Lay Polydore, and all her misery
Her mournful captive mind refused, and she
Barked like a dog, to such forlorn degree
Had sorrow moved her. But the Theban land
Such furies held not, nor the Trojans met
Such naked hate, as here I saw. There ran
Two shades with rabid working jaws, that bit
As snaps a sow thrust outward from the sty,
The full trough waiting. One bent down, and set
Its teeth behind Capocchio's neck, and so
It dragged him, while his belly rubbed the grit.
Whereat the trembling Arentine began,
"That goblin is Gianni Schicchi. Thus
He mangles - "
"May that other's teeth forego
Thy neck-joint ever! Grudge thou not to show
Who is she, ere she passes hence."
He said,
"That female imp, the ancient shade is she
Of Myrrha, who with love flagitious
Approached her father in false garb, as he
Who gnaws Capocchio, aped Donati's dead,
The will by which the priceless mare he won
Dictating in that guise."
The furious two
Passed onward, mangling as they went, and I
The ill-born shadows more surveyed. Was one
Shaped like a lute, had but his groin begun
A forkless form. The heavy dropsy drew
His lips apart, as those whom fevers burn.
Amidst this grimness, turn your eyes to see,
And hearken that which makes my misery
Beyond the eyes' observing. Justice sets
Before my sight the cool fresh rivulets
That Casentino's verdant hills provide
For Arno's fullness. Down the mountain side
They fall for ever in my sight, and so
Contain more torture than this swollen woe
That from my visage wears the flesh. The sight
That gives my frequent sighs a faster flight
Is justly of the place that saw my sin,
Mine own Romena, where the false alloy
I mixed and printed with the Baptist's head,
For which they burnt me. When on earth, I had
All earth's delights my fraudful wealth could buy.
A drop of water now would make me glad;
But had I Branda's fount, to lave therein,
It would not yield me such exceeding joy
As would the sight of Alessandro dead,
Or Guido in such misery here as I.
One, if the ravening shadows do not lie,
Is here already. Had I strength to move
One inch of journey in a hundred years,
I had been started on the road to prove
So fair a rumour, and behold his tears.
Yea, though eleven miles the circle bends,
And half a mile its crowded breadth extends -
For by their tempting in this sink I lie." asked him, "Next thy swollen boundary,
Right-hand, how name ye those unmoving two
That steam like hands in winter bathed?"
He said,
"When first I tumbled in this pot to stew,
So lay they both. They have not raised a head.
I think they will not through eternity.
The nearer is the wife of Potiphar
The other Sinon, that false Greek of Troy.
From burning fever reek they thus."
Too far
His scorn betrayed him. In a fierce annoy
The Trojan smote him with a lifted arm,
The rigid belly like a beaten drum
Resounding.
"Though my heavy limbs subtract
The power of motion, for so foul an act
My arm yet serves me." - So the Brescian said,
And brought it down upon the fevered head.
"It served thee little from a larger harm,
Or wherefore in full manhood didst thou come
Amongst us from the stake? It served, no doubt,
The base alloy to mix, and stamp it out."
Is truth, but say how long thy tongue hath learnt
Such custom? Falsehood was thine earthly skill."
Outpace me. Would'st thou chide a lonely lie?
A thousand times thy hand would falsify.
There is no demon here could match the sum
Of thine iniquities."
"Such magnitude
Had thy one falsehood, all the world has spewed
Its indignation on thy name: be that
The heaviest burden of thy guilt."
"Be thine
The thirst that cracks thee, and the putrid filth
By which thou art distended."
"Like a cat
Thy jaw spits fury, as in life; if mine
Be moisture-swollen thirst, no fairer tilth
Ye garner for your gain," the Brescian said.
"The burning fever and the aching head.
I think Narcissus' mirror would not shine
For long unlicked beneath thee."
I paused to hear them, till my Master said,
"A little longer, and thy fixed regard
Will end our friendship."
So sharply, all with sudden shame I glowed,
And might not answer. On I walked as one
Who dreams and wishes that the dream were done,
So evil turns it while he dreams, and so
Desires and knows not his desire is true.
So walked I in my shame and did not know
My shame forgave me in his thought. I knew
His anger, only in my thought alive,
Until he told me, "Weaker shame than thine
A greater fault would cancel; therefore cease
A grief too weighty. When we next arrive
At any kindred scene, thy mind release
More quickly. Discord in such filth is nought.
The thought to hear it is a vulgar thought."
So healed he with the tongue that hurt before,
Like that charmed spear which could the wounds restore
That first it made; and neither spake we more
The while we climbed from out the final pit,
To reach a hollow where nor dark nor day
Was round us. Here a horn above me blew
So loud that thunder to the noise of it
Were weakness. Not so loud Orlando's horn
Called vainly from the rout that cast away
An empire's purpose. Up I looked, and knew
A range of towers confronted, and thereat
I questioned, "Master, say what town is that
So near us?"
"Through the veil of darkness drawn,
The distance mocks thee. Let us haste, that so
The truth be shown," he said, and then - "But no,"
And took me kindly by the hand, - "the worst
Will seem less dreadful, if I show thee first.
They are not towers in a circling wall,
But giants planted round the pit, that all
Show upwards from the navel." As the mist
Thins slowly, by the morning sunlight kissed
Till hidden forms show vaguely, and reshape
Their gradual outlines as the vapour leaves
The obstructed air, the gloom, as near we drew,
Reformed my error with a closer view
More frightful. For the nether pit receives
Their legs and bellies, while the rest doth rise
Like Montereggione's towers, that crown
The wall's full circle. Upwards from the thighs
One monster faced me. Nature found escape
From such creation ere our time, and well
She chose her condemnation. Still Jove's frown
Against them thunders. If the monstrous whale
Its breed continue, or the elephant,
They do not vainly through their bulk rebel
Against the rule of nature. Wits are scant,
And weight is harmless. When they both unite
What is there in mankind that might prevail
To make defence against them?
Like the pine
That stands before St. Peter's, such the sight
His visage showed me. All the rest alike
Was monstrous. Aproned by the bank, he yet
Such stature showed, that three tall Frisians
One on the other, could not thus combine
To reach his hair. The savage mouth began,
Rafel mai amech zabi almi,
To shout in rage toward us. Speech of man
It might not nearer. In full scorn my guide
The meaning of that barren noise supplied,
"His own his accusation. Nimrod he,
Who brought confusion on the tongues we speak;
In vain for converse here your questions seek.
He comprehends our speech no more than we
The sounds he rumbles. Dullard! take thy horn.
On thine own breast it hangs, and yet thy mind
Confuses, that it may not always find
And vent its passion with such blasts."
We went
Left-hand, and pacing thence a cross-bow shot,
A fiercer and more monstrous monument
Appalled me. Who the artist, once who got
Those cords around him, daunts my mind, but so
It had been. His right arm behind his back,
Five times were girt the parts exposed.
"Attack,"
My Master told, "against high Jove he planned,
What time the giants with the gods at war
Affrighted Heaven. Hence the equal law
That binds the arms he lifted. This ye see
Is Ephialtes."
"Master, might there be
Among these shapes the bulk of Briareus?"
"Yea, but far off he stands, and bound is he
Alike to this one, though of face more grim.
But Antæus, who did not war with Zeus,
Is near, and as there are no bonds on him,
He shall convey us down the sink of guilt."
The bulk of Ephialtes, straining, shook
To break that bondage. Dread, that made me look,
So worked that fear alone my life had spilt,
Had not the strong bands cheered me.
On we went
And Antæus reached, five ells of height who showed
Above the edge whereon we walked, although
One half was in the dreadful cave below
To which we journeyed.
"Thou, who once abode,"
My guide addressed him, "in that vale of fate
From which the broken Carthaginians fled,
To Scipio's glory; thou, whose hands have caught
A thousand lions for thine ancient prey;
Thou, whose strong aid, it seems, had likely brought
The strife Titanic to a different day
From that which closed it, - set us down, I pray,
Upon the frozen floor, and be not shy
To help us. Surely, should we further go
For aid to Typhon or to Tizeo,
The hope of larger fame thy name shall miss,
For this man's life resumes on earth, and he
Can lift thy boast anew. I know for this
All creatures long in Hell."
My Master's plea
So wrought, that hasteful were the monster's hands
To lift us. In the grasp that Hercules
Once felt to fearing was he raised, and I
Caught to him, in one bundle held. As seems
The Carisenda to a man that stands
Beneath the leaning side, when overhead
A low cloud darkens, till its bulk he deems
To overweight it, so the Titan showed
To me beneath. By some alternate road
My choice had lain, but ere my doubt was said
He placed us gently on the dreadful bed
Where Judas is devoured with Lucifer,
And having loosed us on the icy plain,
Like a ship's mast he raised himself again.
IF words were mine unlike our mortal tongue
In which the beauty of all heights is sung,
I might attempt with greater confidence
The core of my conception here. But whence
Are words for things undreamed? What words are fit
In harsh discordance for the utmost pit?
I have no words, and fear to speak, but yet
It must be.
Muses, by whose art was set
The Theban cincture of strong walls, lead on!
Grant me thy power, as once to Amphion,
That speech for truth interpret.
Here converge
The rocky causeways. In this pit submerge
The vomits of creation. All its weight
Is pressed upon them. Here the miscreate
Lament their own existing. Oh, what curse
Here in the bottom of the Universe
Had lifted, had they been but goats! To me
It seems for men too dreadful.
Down the slope
We started from the Titan's feet, and while
I still gazed backward at the wall, I heard
A cry beneath me, "Heed ye where ye tread
Lest fall thy weight on some grief-weary head
That here lamenteth."
Then I looked, and lo!
No ground I trod, but all the space below
Was glass transparent. Not the underflow
Of Austrian Danube from the weight of snow
Such roof divides. Not Don, alone that lies
Beneath the silence of the frozen skies,
Such mantle wears. Sclavonia's lonely height
Had fallen here, or Lucca's mountain white,
And had not cracked it.
As the frogs at night
Sit croaking, with their heads above the stream,
While on the bank the gleaner rests, adream
Of fields she emptied, so the miscreants lay
Frozen in firm ice, so deeply sunk that they
Showed livid through the hard transparency
That bound them, with their heads alone left free,
And chattering jaws that rapped the ice, and made
A noise of storks conversing. More betrayed
Their ceaseless tears the bitter woes they knew, -
Salt tears that froze in falling.
Here were two
So closely brothered in that frozen bed
That face to face the hair of either head
Was mingled, and their hidden features pressed
Each other.
"Tell me, ye that breast to breast
So consort," asked I, "who on earth ye be?"
Whereat they bent their backward necks to see
Who called, and as their faces rose apart
The tears that ever from their eyes would start
The fierce cold hardened at their source, and held
Their eyelids firm as any smith should weld,
Or wood to wood with iron is clamped. Whereat,
Like he-goats angered, both their heads began
To butt the other in their rage. With that
Another near, who did not lift his face,
Whose ears the frost had taken, gave reply,
"Why seek ye, gazing at our woeful case,
To read us? If for aught ye list to know
Those twain, the vale of the Bisenzio
Was theirs, from Count Alberto. From one womb
They came, and search ye all the dreadful doom
Of this Caina where ye stand, not one
Is here more worthy of the frozen pie
In which they serve us. Not that wretch fordone
By Arthur's hand, who pierced him, front and back
And shadow at once; nor he that next doth lie
Beyond me, Mascheroni, - if ye come
From Tuscan hills, my words ye will not lack
To place him; - nor Focaccia. Lest ye try
To vex me with more words, de Pazzi I;
I wait Carlino here, to justify
My lighter guilt."
Of doggish faces, numb
With frozen torture, round our feet there lay
A thousand. Still my shuddering thought recalls,
And shivers ever as the frozen ford
I strive to think not. Was it destiny,
Or chance, or will? My doubt I own, but while
We trod mid-distance of the final mile,
My foot caught sharply one projecting head.
Whereat it raised a weeping voice, and said,
"Why dost thou trample thus the doomed, unless
Thou come designed to deal more bitterness
In hate for Montaperto?"
"Master, stay
One moment here, and any more delay
I will not ask."
My Master paused, and I
To that reviling spirit gave reply,
For still it cursed me, - "Tell me who thou art,
Who thus reproachest?"
"Nay, but be thy part
To tell me first. Who art thou stumbling thus
Through Antenora, on the cheeks of us
Who suffer? Wert thou yet in life, it were
Too much to pardon."
"Nay, I live; but say
The name thou hadst, and I will make thy day
A longer on the earth than else thy share
Of fame continue."
"Nay, ye little know
The words of flattery on this slope of woe.
We lust oblivion only. Get ye gone!
Nor vex me further."
By the after-scalp
I gripped him roughly. "Speak, or every hair
That grows upon thee, from the root I tear,
Before I leave thee on this icy alp."
And though my face a thousand times ye kick,
I will not tell you."
In my hand his hair
Was twisted, and an ample tuft was flung
Loose on the ice, he barking out despair
And rage together, when the song he sung
Aroused his neighbour, "Bocca, what thy woe?
Canst thou not chatter with thy jaws as we,
And cease thy barking? What strange fiend supplies
An extra pain?"
I said, "Thy name I know,
And would no more. Accursed, traitorous!
Thy name a byword on the earth shall be;
For I will tell thy treasons."
"He who lies
So near, and talks so glibly, thou canst tell,
And not me only. Thou canst speak it thus, -
'Close-pinched with Bocca in the frozen hell
I saw Duera. There his chattering jaws
Bewail the Frenchman's silver bribe.' If more
They ask, who shiver in the icy claws,
Boccaria lies beyond, whose neck was slit
At Florence: and Soldanire thou canst say
Is not far distant; and Ganelone;
And Tribaldello fails not to deplore
The gates he opened in the night."
We stayed
To hear no further. In short space ahead
We saw two frozen in one hole. As bread
Is gnawed in hunger: as Menalippus
Was chewed by Tydeus: so the upmost head
Gripped with its teeth the neck beneath, and tore
Just where the nape and brain unite. I said,
"O thou, so hard whose bestial hatred gnaws
Thy mate in condemnation, if good cause
Thy rage explain, it were thy gain with us
To share it. Upward I return once more,
And surely as my speech remain, I then
Will give thee justice in the mouths of men."
THE sinner ceased his ghastly meal, and wiped
His jaws upon the victim's hair, and said,
"Thou willest that reluctant words recall
A grief so dire it wrings my heart, before
An utterance forms, but if my speech shall fall
A seed that fruiting backward from the dead
Shall make him whom I tear infamed the more
Among our people, then I gladly weep
To tell thee. How to this sad depth ye came,
Where no man erst has been, nor what thy name
I know, but that familiar speech of thine
I heard, and hailed thee friend and Florentine,
- For I was Ugolino. Him I keep
In this remembrance of an earthly woe,
The arch-priest Ubaldini. Now I tell
Of that which brought us to this depth of Hell,
And why high Justice thus permits that I
Feed here, and shall not starve, and shall not die,
Nor cease my feeding. All I need not say
Of mutual fraud, nor how he snared away
My life, a tale for other tongues, but this,
The cruel fate I found, they well may miss,
It was so secret. In that hole which now
Is called the Dungeon of the Starved I lay,
And watched the narrow slit by night and day,
Until nine moons across its space of sky
Had ended, when the evil dream I knew
That did the curtain of my fate untie.
A gaunt wolf with his weary whelps that ran,
And after came the hounds; and there a man
That cheered them on; the lord of all was he,
This Ubaldini, and before him rode
Gualandi, and Sismondi, and thereby
Lanfranchi; and the hounds, that closer drew,
Were swift and lean and eager. I could see
The wolf among his whelps, that was but I
And my young sons, grow weary, and the hounds
Were tearing at their flanks. I waked to find
The night yet darkened, but the moaning sounds
My sons were making in their sleep for bread
Had roused me. Cruel were the hearer's heart
Who would not weep for that their cries forebode.
If not for this, for what should tears have part?
It was the first day that we were not fed.
The hour recurred. With anxious eyes, and
Of any speech we waited. Now they come
- The steps we know - we heard the echoing
That locked and sealed us from the world: we heard
The steps recede. I had not wept nor stirred.
I watched them weeping till the youngest said,
'Father, what ails thee? Wilt thou speak?' But I
Gazed and not moved, and could not find reply.
And all that day not any word I said,
And all that night, nor any tears I shed,
Till through the bars the morning light anew
Revealed our grief, and in my sons I knew
The aspect of myself, and anguish wrought
Within me, till I gnawed my hands. Whereat
They answered (impulsed by a single thought
That hunger urged me), 'Father, do not stay
Thine hand against us. Shouldst thou take away
The lives we owe thee, right it were, and less
To us the pain, that from the flesh we give
Thy life continue.'
Then I strove subdue
The anguish in me, lest I more distress
The sons beyond myself I loved. That day,
And all the next, in silent pain we lay
On earth too hard to take us. After that
Death came. For when the next sad dawn was dim
Fell Gaddo at my feet, and with one cry,
'O father, wilt thou aid us nought?' he died.
And two days more I watched, and after him,
One after one, beheld them fall and die.
Then, blind with famine, three days more I groped
Around them, till my grief no more denied
The pangs of fasting" - as these words he said,
With hateful eyes upon his murderer's head,
Again he seized it in strong teeth that bit
Hard on the bone. Ah, Pisa! since thy state
Thy neighbours leave, and all vituperate
Who know thee, shall not those two isles, that lie
So near, block Arno at its mouth, and throw
Its waters on thee till the depth of it
Hath drowned the last man in thy walls? For though
Had Ugolino all thy towers betrayed,
It were not right for one man traitorous
His children in their youth to torture thus
To innocent death, thou Thebes of Italy!
And therefore shall their frustrate names remain
In minds of all men where my tale is made.
Uguccione and Bragata they,
Anselm and Gaddo.
On we went, to see
A varied torment. Here the frozen pain
That bowed those others, bends its victims back.
They may not weep. The fount of tears they lack.
For all the hollows of their eyes are filled
With hardened ice. The tears that first they spilled
Are crystal visors to their sight.
To me,
Though cold had calloused all my face by now,
It seemed a wind was passing. To my guide
I questioned, "Master, is not vital heat
Extinguished here? Can utter cold allow
This downward air?"
He answered. "Soon we meet
Its cause, and sight shall tell thee."
Near us cried
A wretch that marked us of the frozen host,
"O souls so cruel that the latest post
Is here assigned ye, will ye break away
The blocks one moment from mine eyes, that stay
The waiting tears?"
We paused, and I replied.
"Then tell us who thou art, and whence thy doom,
And he should well deserve the frozen tomb
Who did not aid thee."
"Alberigo I,
The Jovial Friar, whom Manfred brought to die!
The evil fruit that in my orchard grew
Returns. The figs I gave: the dates I pick."
So soon?"
He said, "I know not. We that lie
In Ptolomæa, oft this depth descend
Before our bodies reach their natural end.
For those that like myself to death betray
Their friends, a waiting demon drags away,
Casts to this cistern of our kind, and then
His body takes, and in the ways of men
Controls it, till his time be spent. Behind
Is Brancha d'Oria. If his corse have died,
Who here finds winter, better chance have ye
Than I to tell, who earlier came, but he
Long years has suffered in this ice."
I said,
"I think thou liest. Brancha is not dead.
He lives on earth, and in our mortal way
His body eats and sleeps and warms today."
Within the Malebranche's ditch," said he,
"This man a demon in his place had left,
And one beside who shared his perfidy
Came likewise ere his time; but reach thy hand
To do the service that my speech can claim."
I heard, but different course my heart had planned
Since horror learnt his name. The ice uncleft
Still blinds him. Rudeness there was courtesy.
Why do ye haste not on your path to these,
And earth seem cleaner? With Romagna's worst,
I found Ser Brancha, for his soul's disease
Ere death who suffers in this place accurst.
THE lifted banners of the King of Hell,"
- My leader roused me from my thought -
"are nigh;
Look therefore." I beheld, as in such sky
As foul mist hides, or murk of night obscures,
A turning windmill loom; and such the gale
Its motions caused, that I, of strength too frail
To meet it longer, shrank behind my guide.
The sinners here contained in Hell's last sewers
Were frozen solid in firm ice, and shone
Like straw in glass; and as we walked thereon
We saw some flat, and some with heads below,
And some pulled backward like a bended bow,
And some were upright.
When we got so near
I needs must see, my leader stepped aside.
He said, "Let fortitude reject thy fear,
For Dis confronts thee."
There I think I died,
Though living. Not the icy blast I met
A living man could face, a dead could feel.
But here speech fails me. Reader, words are nought
To help me further. To thy livelier thought
I leave it.
Breast-deep in the ice was set
The Emperor of the dolorous realm; but yet
So huge he towered that I should seem more fit
With giants to consort, than a giant compare
With one arm only. He, that once so fair
Could walk assured in Heaven, the lordliest there
Beneath his Maker, fills this glacial pit
If by his woe we price his earlier weal,
Or judge his glory by his aspect now,
Well may he fount affliction. For one head
I saw three faces. One was fiery red.
The others slanting from each shoulder rose
To form one crest that shapes creation's woes.
One pallid yellow, one the sable hue
Of those who wander from the tropic land
Wherefrom the sources of the Nile expand.
There were two wings the three foul heads below
Such bird to suit. I never saw such spread
Of ocean canvas to the wind: but these
Were bat-like, plumeless, and the wind they bred,
- They flapped unceasing - caused the glacier freeze
Down which we traversed. With six eyes he wept,
The while a sinner in each mouth he kept,
And chewed, and loosed not. Tears and foam unite
With dribbling blood, that spurts from every bite
Down his three chins. The midmost was not bit
So much as torn. At times his back was flayed
All bare of skin.
"That soul that most endures,
Whose head Apollyon in his mouth hath got,
Whose legs kick outward, is Iscariot:"
My Master told, "of those whose heads may quit
The teeth that chew them, down the swarthier chin
Is Brutus dangling. Mark how silently
He writhes. The comrade of his doom is he
Who shared that treason, Cassius. - But the night
Is rising in the world without, and we
Must hasten. All is seen that lies herein,
And hence depart we."
At his word I put
My arm around him. He with lifted foot
His opening watched, and when the wings were wide
Leapt from the glacier to the tangled side,
And midst the shaggy tufts of frozen hair
The scaly hide descended.
When we came
To pass the swelling of the haunch, my guide
With arduous effort turned, till where his head
Had been before, he placed his feet instead,
And gripped the hair as one that mounts. I thought
That backwards into Hell his path he sought.
But he, hard-panting with that toil, replied,
"Hold fast - be silent - by this only stair
We find Hell's exit."
Thus he climbed to where
An opening gashed the rock, and reaching there
He placed me on the ledge, and warily
Himself stepped after. Here I looked to see
Again the front of Lucifer, and lo!
His legs stuck upward.
Were a man too dense
To understand the point we passed, he still
Might judge the toil before me, to return
To earth's far surface. "Gain thy feet, for ill
The pathway climbs," my guide enjoined, "that hence
Shall take us, as thy weary steps must learn,
And in the outer skies the sun midway
To noon is lifted."
Round I looked, and saw
No palace, but such cleft in earth's deep maw
As likest to a natural dungeon showed,
Ill-floored, ill-lighted.
"Ere this evil road,"
I answered, rising, "leave the deep abyss,
I pray thee tell me, lest my thought should err,
Why upward rise the legs of Lucifer,
And where the icy plain we crossed? and how
The morning shines without, which was but now
To night descending?"
"Dost thou spare to think
Its meaning? Downward through the central sink
We passed. We have not backward climbed to where
I leapt, but holding by the frozen hair
We scaled this maggot of the evil core
To which all weights conclude; and when, midway,
We turned with effort, then beneath us lay
That half the world from which we came, and we
Look upward to that other world of sea
Which those who sail beyond thine hemisphere
Have found, and left uncharted. Standing here
Beneath us is the great dry land that lies
Within the cover of the northern skies,
And centres round the Sacred Mount whereon
The Holiest died. Above us reaches far
The region where the pathless oceans are;
For this side fell from Heaven the Worm of Hell
And all the land drew backward where he fell,
And hid beneath the waters. There is morn
When nightfall closes on thy northern land;
And there our issue, for a stream has worn
A tortuous passage from the outer skies
To this foul pit where Beelzebub lies,
And through the darkness of the toilsome way
Its sound must lead us."
Nothing more we said,
Nor paused for rest, however jagged and rough
And dark the path we climbed, and long enough
For mortal feet to weary. Fast he led:
And I made tireless by that hope ahead
Pursued him upward, till the rocks were rent
With first a sight of Heaven's clear firmament,
And then the earth's clean airs with learnt delight
I breathed, and round me was the beauteous night,
And overhead the stars.
