And I to him: "Although I come, I stay not ; But who art thou that hast become so squalid?" Thou spirit maledict, do thou remain ; He kissed my face, and said: "Disdainful soul, Goodness is none, that decks his memory; Who here shall be like unto swine in mire, 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, Within there in the valley I discern That kindles them within makes them look red, Then we arrived within the moats profound, Not without making first a circuit wide, We came unto a place where loud the pilot More than a thousand at the gates I saw 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; "O my dear Guide, who more than seven times 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, 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, 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." 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, Of everlasting lamentation knew, She who is weeping on the right, Alecto; They beat them with their palms, and cried so loud, 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, Right onward, laden with dust, it goes superb, And puts to flight the wild beasts and the shepherds. 'here yonder where that smoke is most intense." Eve as the frogs before the hostile serpent រ 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 Wherefore recalcitrate against that will, couched ? From which the end can never be cut off, Your Cerberus, if you remember well, For that still bears his chin and gullet pecled." 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; 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, Even as at Arles, where stagnant grows the Rhone, 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. 110 113 124 |