And I to him: "Although I come, I stay not ; For thee I know, though thou art all defiled." He kissed my face, and said: "Disdainful soul, Goodness is none, that decks his memory; Who here shall be like unto swine in mire, And I: "My Master, much should I be pleased, Reveal itself, thou shalt be satisfied; Made of him by the people of the mire, Turned round upon himself with his own teeth. But on mine ears there smote a lamentation, Then we arrived within the moats profound, Not without making first a circuit wide, We came unto a place where loud the pilot Out of the Heavens rained down, who angrily And said: "Come thou alone, and he begone 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 And if the going farther be denied us, Said unto me: "Fear not; because our passage But here await me, and thy weary spirit Comfort and nourish with a better hope; So onward goes and there abandons me My Father sweet, and I remain in doubt, I could not hear what he proposed to them; They closed the portals, those our adversaries, On my Lord's breast, who had remained without Of all its boldness, and he said, with sighs, And unto me: "Thou, because I am angry, Fear not, for I will conquer in the trial, 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." 125 130 CANTO IX. THAT hue which cowardice brought out on me, 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 . . . 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, "Seldom it comes to pass that one of us 5 ΤΟ 15 20 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, 25 Before within that wall she made me enter, That is the lowest region and the darkest, And farthest from the heaven which circles all. Encompasses about the city dolent, 30 And more he said, but not in mind I have it ; Because mine eye had altogether drawn me The three infernal Furies stained with blood, 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 Megæra, on the left-hand side; She who is weeping on the right, Alecto; They beat them with their palms, and cried so loud, "Turn thyself round, and keep thine eyes close shut, O ye who have undistempered intellects, Observe the doctrine that conceals itself The clangour of a sound with terror fraught, Not otherwise it was than of a wind Impetuous on account of adverse heats, Mine eyes he loosed, and said: "Direct the nerve Even as the frogs before the hostile serpent Until each one is huddled in the earth, More than a thousand ruined souls I saw, Thus fleeing from before one who on foot Waving his left hand oft in front of him, And to the Master turned; and he made sign 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, Your Cerberus, if you remember well, Then he returned along the miry road, And spake no word to us, but had the look And we our feet directed tow'rds the city, Within we entered without any contest; What the condition such a fortress holds, And see on every hand an ample plain, Even as at Arles, where stagnant grows the Rhone, That shuts in Italy and bathes its borders, The sepulchres make all the place uneven; So likewise did they there on every side, All of their coverings uplifted were, And from them issued forth such dire laments, Sooth seemed they of the wretched and tormented. 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 |