OFT have I seen at some cathedral door A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, Far off the noises of the world retreat; So, as I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate, Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, While the eternal ages watch and wait. How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, What exultations trampling on despair, What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, Uprose this poem of the earth and air, This medieval miracle of song! 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, But of the good to treat, which there I found, So full was I of slumber at the moment 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 That in my heart's lake had endured throughout Forth issued from the sea upon the shore, The way resumed I on the desert slope, And lo! almost where the ascent began, A panther light and swift exceedingly, And up the sun was mounting with those stars But not so much, that did not give me fear With head uplifted, and with ravenous hunger, 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, And the time comes that causes him to lose, Before mine eyes did one present himself, "Have pity on me," unto him I cried, And lived at Rome under the good Augustus, A poet was I, and I sang that just Son of Anchises, who came forth from Troy, But thou, why goest thou back to such annoyance? Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech?” Avail me the long study and great love Thou art alone the one from whom I took Do thou protect me from her, famous Sage, 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, Many the animals with whom she weds, And more they shall be still, until the Greyhound He shall not feed on either earth or pelf, But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue ; 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, Thou follow me, and I will be thy guide, Within the fire, because they hope to come, |