Harvard Classics Volume 20. Golden Deer Classics

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      His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few

      Thus to another spake: “Along this path

      Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!”

      So saw I fluctuate in successive change

      The unsteady ballast of the seventh hold:

      And here if aught my pen have swerved, events

      So strange may be its warrant. O’er mine eyes

      Confusion hung, and on my thoughts amaze.

      Yet ’scaped they not so covertly, but well

      I mark’d Sciancato: he alone it was

      Of the three first that came, who changed not: tho’

      The other’s fate, Gaville! still dost rue.

Canto XXVI

      Argument.—Remounting by the steps, down which they have descended to the seventh gulf, they go forward to the arch that stretches over the eighth, and from thence behold numberless flames wherein are punished the evil counsellors, each flame containing a sinner, save one, in which were Diomede and Ulysses, the latter of whom relates the manner of his death.

      Florence, exult! for thou so mightily

      Hast thriven, that o’er land and sea thy wings

      Thou beatest, and thy name spreads over hell.

      Among the plunderers, such the three I found

      Thy citizens; whence shame to me thy son,

      And no proud honour to thyself redounds.

      But if our minds, when dreaming near the dawn,

      Are of the truth presageful, thou ere long

      Shalt feel what Prato^[170] (not to say the rest)

      Would fain might come upon thee; and that chance

      Were in good time, if it befell thee now.

      Would so it were, since it must needs befall!

      For as time wears me, I shall grieve the more.

      We from the depth departed; and my guide

      Remounting scaled the flinty steps, which late

      We downward traced, and drew me up the steep.

      Pursuing thus our solitary way

      Among the crags and splinters of the rock,

      Sped not our feet without the help of hands.

      Then sorrow seized me, which e’en now revives,

      As my thought turns again to what I saw,

      And, more than I am wont, I rein and curb

      The powers of nature in me, lest they run

      Where Virtue guides not; that, if aught of good

      My gentle star or something better gave me,

      I envy not myself the precious boon.

      As in that season, when the sun least veils

      His face that lightens all, what time the fly

      Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then,

      Upon some cliff reclined, beneath him sees

      Fire-flies innumerous spangling o’er the vale,

      Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labor lies;

      With flames so numberless throughout its space

      Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth

      Was to my view exposed. As he, whose wrongs

      The bears avenged, as its departure saw

      Elijah’s chariot, when the steeds erect

      Raised their steep flight for heaven; his eyes meanwhile,

      Straining pursued them, till the flame alone,

      Upsoaring like a misty speck, he kenn’d:

      E’en thus along the gulf moves every flame,

      A sinner so enfolded close in each,

      That none exhibits token of the theft.

      Upon the bridge I forward bent to look

      And grasp’d a flinty mass, or else had fallen,

      Though push’d not from the height. The guide, who mark’d

      How I did gaze attentive, thus began:

      “Within these ardours are the spirits; each

      Swatched in confining fire.” “Master! thy word,”

      I answer’d, “hath assured me; yet I deem’d

      Already of the truth, already wish’d

      To ask thee who is in yon fire, that comes

      So parted at the summit, as it seem’d

      Ascending from that funeral pile^[171] where lay

      The Theban brothers.” He replied: “Within,

      Ulysses there and Diomede endure

      Their penal tortures, thus to vengeance now

      Together hasting, as erewhile to wrath

      These in the flame with ceaseless groans deplore

      The ambush of the horse,^[172] that open’d wide

      A portal for the goodly seed to pass,

      Which sow’d imperial Rome; nor less the guile

      Lament they, whence, of her Achilles ’reft,

      Deidamia yet in death complains.

      And there is rued the stratagem that Troy

      Of her Palladium spoil’d.”—“If they have power

      Of utterance from within these sparks,” said I,

      “O master! think my prayer a thousand-fold

      In repetition urged, that thou СКАЧАТЬ