Harvard Classics Volume 20. Golden Deer Classics

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      How him love thrall’d. Alone we were, and no

      Suspicion near us. Oft-times by that reading

      Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue

      Fled from our alter’d cheek. But at one point

      Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,

      The wished smile so raptorously kiss’d

      By one so deep in love, then he, who ne’er

      From me shall separate, at once my lips

      All trembling kiss’d. The book and writer both

      Were love’s purveyors. In its leaves that day

      We read no more.” While thus one spirit spake,

      The other wail’d so sorely, that heart-struck

      I, through compassion fainting, seem’d not far

      From death, and like a corse fell to the ground.

Canto VI

      Argument.—On his recovery, the Poet finds himself in the third circle, where the gluttonous are punished. Their torment is, to lie in the mire, under a continual and heavy storm of hail, snow, and discolored water; Cerberus, meanwhile barking over them with his threefold throat, and rending them piecemeal. One of these, who on earth was named Ciacco, foretells the divisions with which Florence is about to be distracted. Dante proposes a question to his guide, who solves it; and they proceed toward the fourth circle.

      My sense reviving, that erewhile had droop’d

      With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief

      O’ercame me wholly, straight around I see

      New torments, new tormented souls, which way

      Soe’er I move, or turn, or bend my sight.

      In the third circle I arrive, of showers

      Ceaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchanged

      For ever, both in kind and in degree.

      Large hail, discolor’d water, sleety flaw

      Through the dun midnight air stream’d down amain:

      Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell.

      Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange,

      Through his wide threefold throat, barks as a dog

      Over the multitude immersed beneath.

      His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard,

      His belly large, and claw’d the hands, with which

      He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs

      Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs,

      Under the rainy deluge, with one side

      The other screening, oft they roll them round,

      A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm^[36]

      Descried us, savage Cerberus, he oped

      His jaws, and the fangs show’d us; not a limb

      Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms

      Expanding on the ground, thence fill’d with earth

      Raised them, and cast it in his ravenous maw.

      E’en as a dog, that yelling bays for food

      His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall

      His fury, bent alone with eager haste

      To swallow it; so dropp’d the loathsome cheeks

      Of demon Cerberus, who thundering stuns

      The spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain.

      We, o’er the shades thrown prostrate by the brunt

      Of the heavy tempest passing, set our feet

      Upon their emptiness, that substance seem’d.

      They all along the earth extended lay,

      Save one, that sudden raised himself to sit,

      Soon as that way he saw us pass. “O thou!”

      He cried, “who through the infernal shades art led,

      Own, if again thou know’st me. Thou wast framed

      Or ere my frame was broken.” I replied:

      “The anguish thou endurest perchance so takes

      Thy form from my remembrance, that it seems

      As if I saw thee never. But inform

      Me thou art, that in a place so sad

      Art set, and in such torment, that although

      Other be greater, none disgusteth more.”

      He thus in answer to my words rejoin’d:

      “Thy city, heap’d with envy to the brim,

      Aye, that the measure overflows its bounds,

      Held me in brighter days. Ye citizens

      Were wont to name me Ciacco.^[37] For the sin

      Of gluttony, damned vice, beneath this rain,

      E’en as thou seest, I with fatigue am worn:

      Nor I sole spirit in this woe: all these

      Have by like crime incurr’d like punishment.”

      No more he said, and I my speech resumed:

      “Ciacco! thy! dire affliction grieves me much,

      Even to tears. But tell me, if thou know’st,

      What shall at length befall the citizens

      of the divided city;^[38] whether any

      Just one inhabit there: and tell the cause,

      Whence jarring Discord hath assail’d it thus.”

      He then: “After long striving they will come

      To blood; and the wild party СКАЧАТЬ