Part 10

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.