I saw Camilla and Penthesilea
On the other side, and saw the King Latinus,Who with Lavinia his daughter sat;
I saw that Brutus who drove Tarquin forth,Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia,And saw alone, apart, the Saladin.
When I had lifted up my brows a little,The Master I beheld of those who know,Sit with his philosophic family.
All gaze upon him, and all do him honour.There I beheld both Socrates and Plato,Who nearer him before the others stand;
Democritus, who puts the world on chance,Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales,Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus;
Of qualities I saw the good collector,Hight Dioscorides; and Orpheus saw I,Tully and Livy, and moral Seneca,
Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy,Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna,Averroes, who the great Comment made.
I cannot all of them pourtray in full,Because so drives me onward the long theme,That many times the word comes short of fact.
The sixfold company in two divides;Another way my sapient Guide conducts meForth from the quiet to the air that trembles;
And to a place I come where nothing shines.
Inferno: Canto V
Thus I descended out of the first circleDown to the second, that less space begirds,And so much greater dole, that goads to wailing.
There standeth Minos horribly, and snarls;Examines the transgressions at the entrance;Judges, and sends according as he girds him.
I say, that when the spirit evil-bornCometh before him, wholly it confesses;And this discriminator of transgressions
Seeth what place in Hell is meet for it;Girds himself with his tail as many timesAs grades he wishes it should be thrust down.
Always before him many of them stand;They go by turns each one unto the judgment;They speak, and hear, and then are downward hurled.
“O thou, that to this dolorous hostelryComest,” said Minos to me, when he saw me,Leaving the practice of so great an office,
“Look how thou enterest, and in whom thou trustest;Let not the portal’s amplitude deceive thee.”And unto him my Guide: “Why criest thou too?
Do not impede his journey fate-ordained;It is so willed there where is power to doThat which is willed; and ask no further question.”
And now begin the dolesome notes to growAudible unto me; now am I comeThere where much lamentation strikes upon me.
I came into a place mute of all light,Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest,If by opposing winds ’t is combated.
The infernal hurricane that never restsHurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.
When they arrive before the precipice,There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments,There they blaspheme the puissance divine.
I understood that unto such a tormentThe carnal malefactors were condemned,Who reason subjugate to appetite.
And as the wings of starlings bear them onIn the cold season in large band and full,So doth that blast the spirits maledict;
It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them;No hope doth comfort them for evermore,Not of repose, but even of lesser pain.
And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays,Making in air a long line of themselves,So saw I coming, uttering lamentations,
Shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress.Whereupon said I: “Master, who are thosePeople, whom the black air so castigates?”
“The first of those, of whom intelligenceThou fain wouldst have,” then said he unto me,“The empress was of many languages.
To sensual vices she was so abandoned,That lustful she made licit in her law,To remove the blame to which she had been led.
She is Semiramis, of whom we readThat she succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse;She held the land which now the Sultan rules.
The next is she who killed herself for love,And broke faith with the ashes of Sichaeus;Then Cleopatra the voluptuous.”
Helen I saw, for whom so many ruthlessSeasons revolved; and saw the great Achilles,Who at the last hour combated with Love.
Paris I saw, Tristan; and more than a thousandShades did he name and point out with his finger,Whom Love had separated from our life.
After that I had listened to my Teacher,Naming the dames of eld and cavaliers,Pity prevailed, and I was nigh bewildered.
And I began: “O Poet, willinglySpeak would I to those two, who go together,And seem upon the wind to be so light.”
And, he to me: “Thou’lt mark, when they shall beNearer to us; and then do thou implore themBy love which leadeth them, and they will come.”
Soon as the wind in our direction sways them,My voice uplift I: “O ye weary souls!Come speak to us, if no one interdicts it.”
As turtle-doves, called onward by desire,With open and steady wings to the sweet nestFly through the air by their volition borne,
So came they from the band where Dido is,Approaching us athwart the air malign,So strong was the affectionate appeal.
“O living creature gracious and benignant,Who visiting goest through the purple airUs, who have stained the world incarnadine,
If were the King of the Universe our friend,We would pray unto him to give thee peace,Since thou hast pity on our woe perverse.
Of what it pleases thee to hear and speak,That will we hear, and we will speak to you,While silent is the wind, as it is now.
Sitteth the city, wherein I was born,Upon the sea-shore where the Po descendsTo rest in peace with all his retinue.
Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize,Seized this man for the person beautifulThat was ta’en from me, and still the mode offends me.
Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving,Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly,That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me;
Love has conducted us unto one death;Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!”These words were borne along from them to us.
As soon as I had heard those souls tormented,I bowed my face, and so long held it downUntil the Poet said to me: “What thinkest?”
When I made answer, I began: “Alas!How many pleasant thoughts, how much desire,Conducted these unto the dolorous pass!”
Then unto them I turned me, and I spake,And I began: “Thine agonies, Francesca,Sad and compassionate to weeping make me.
But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs,By what and in what manner Love conceded,That you should know your dubious desires?”
And she to me: “There is no greater sorrowThan to be mindful of the happy timeIn misery, and that thy Teacher knows.
But, if to recognise the earliest rootOf love in us thou hast so great desire,I will do even as he who weeps and speaks.
One day we reading were for our delightOf Launcelot, how Love did him enthral.Alone we were and without any fear.
Full many a time our eyes together drewThat reading, and drove the colour from our faces;But one point only was it that o’ercame us.
When as we read of the much-longed-for smileBeing by such a noble lover kissed,This one, who ne’er from me shall be divided,
Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating.Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it.That day no farther did we read therein.”
And all the while one spirit uttered this,The other one did weep so, that, for pity,I swooned away as if I had been dying,
And fell, even as a dead body falls.
Inferno: Canto VI
At the return of consciousness, that closedBefore the pity of those two relations,Which utterly with sadness had confused me,
New torments I behold, and new tormentedAround me, whichsoever way I move,And whichsoever way I turn, and gaze.
In the third circle am I of the rainEternal, maledict, and cold, and heavy;Its law and quality are never new.
Huge hail, and water sombre-hued, and snow,Athwart the tenebrous air pour down amain;Noisome the earth is, that receiveth this.
Cerberus, monster cruel and uncouth,With his three gullets like a dog is barkingOver the people that are there submerged.
Red eyes he has, and unctuous beard and black,And belly large, and armed with claws his hands;He rends the spirits, flays, and quarters them.
Howl the rain maketh them like unto dogs;One side they make a shelter for the other;Oft turn themselves the wretched reprobates.
When Cerberus perceived us, the great worm!His mouths he opened, and displayed his tusks;Not a limb had he that was motionless.
And my Conductor, with his spans extended,Took of the earth, and with his fists well filled,He threw it into those rapacious gullets.
Such as that dog is, who by barking craves,And quiet grows soon as his food he gnaws,For to devour it he but thinks and struggles,
The like became those muzzles filth-begrimedOf Cerberus the demon, who so thundersOver the souls that they would fain be deaf.
We passed across the shadows, which subduesThe heavy rain-storm, and we placed our feetUpon their vanity that person seems.
They all were lying prone upon the earth,Excepting one, who sat upright as soonAs he beheld us passing on before him.
“O thou that art conducted through this Hell,”He said to me, “recall me, if thou canst;Thyself wast made before I was unmade.”
And I to him: “The anguish which thou hastPerhaps doth draw thee out of my remembrance,So that it seems not I have ever seen thee.
But tell me who thou art, that in so dolefulA place art put, and in such punishment,If some are greater, none is so displeasing.”
And he to me: “Thy city, which is fullOf envy so that now the sack runs over,Held me within it in the life serene.
You citizens were wont to call me Ciacco;For the pernicious sin of gluttonyI, as thou seest, am battered by this rain.
And I, sad soul, am not the only one,For all these suffer the like penaltyFor the like sin;” and word no more spake he.
I answered him: “Ciacco, thy wretchednessWeighs on me so that it to weep invites me;But tell me, if thou knowest, to what shall come
The citizens of the divided city;If any there be just; and the occasionTell me why so much discord has assailed it.”
And he to me: “They, after long contention,Will come to bloodshed; and the rustic partyWill drive the other out with much offence.
Then afterwards behoves it this one fallWithin three suns, and rise again the otherBy force of him who now is on the coast.
High will it hold its forehead a long while,Keeping the other under heavy burdens,Howe’er it weeps thereat and is indignant.
The just are two, and are not understood there;Envy and Arrogance and AvariceAre the three sparks that have all hearts enkindled.”
Here ended he his tearful utterance;And I to him: “I wish thee still to teach me,And make a gift to me of further speech.
Farinata and Tegghiaio, once so worthy,Jacopo Rusticucci, Arrigo, and Mosca,And others who on good deeds set their thoughts,
Say where they are, and cause that I may know them;For great desire constraineth me to learnIf Heaven doth sweeten them, or Hell envenom.”
And he: “They are among the blacker souls;A different sin downweighs them to the bottom;If thou so far descendest, thou canst see them.
But when thou art again in the sweet world,I pray thee to the mind of others bring me;No more I tell thee and no more I answer.”
Then his straightforward eyes he turned askance,Eyed me a little, and then bowed his head;He fell therewith prone like the other blind.
And the Guide said to me: “He wakes no moreThis side the sound of the angelic trumpet;When shall approach the hostile Potentate,
Each one shall find again his dismal tomb,Shall reassume his flesh and his own figure,Shall hear what through eternity re-echoes.”
So we passed onward o’er the filthy mixtureOf shadows and of rain with footsteps slow,Touching a little on the future life.
Wherefore I said: “Master, these torments here,Will they increase after the mighty sentence,Or lesser be, or will they be as burning?”
And he to me: “Return unto thy science,Which wills, that as the thing more perfect is,The more it feels of pleasure and of pain.