Harvard Classics Volume 20. Golden Deer Classics

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СКАЧАТЬ yielding to the forceful arguments,

      Of silence, as more perilous I deem’d,

      And answer’d: ‘Father! since thou washest me

      Clear of that guilt wherein I now must fall,

      Large promise with performance scant, be sure,

      Shall make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.’

      “When I was number’d with the dead, then came

      Saint Francis for me; but a cherub dark

      He met, who cried, ‘Wrong me not; he is mine,

      And must below to join the wretched crew,

      For the deceitful counsel which he gave.

      E’er since I watch’d him, hovering at his hair.

      No power can the impenitent absolve;

      Nor to repent, and will, at once consist,

      By contradiction absolute forbid.’

      Oh misery! how I shook myself, when he

      Seized me, and cried, “Thou haply thought’st me not

      A disputant in logic so exact!’

      To Minos down he bore me; and the judge

      Twined eight times round his callous back the tail,

      Which biting with excess of rage, he spake:

      ‘This is a guilty soul, that in the fire

      Must vanish.’ Hence, perdition-doom’d, I rove

      A prey to rankling sorrow, in this garb.”

      When he had thus fulfill’d his words, the flame

      In dolour parted, beating to and fro,

      And writhing its sharp horn. We onward went,

      I and my leader, up along the rock,

      Far as another arch, that overhangs

      The foss, wherein the penalty is paid

      Of those who load them with committed sin.

Canto XXVIII

      Argument.—They arrive in the ninth gulf, where the sowers of scandal, schismatics, and heretics, are seen with their limbs maimed or divided in different ways. Among these the Poet finds Mohammed, Piero da Medicina, Curio, Mosca, and Bertrand de Born.

      Who, e’en in words unfetter’d, might at full

      Tell of the wounds and blood that now I saw,

      Though he repeated oft the tale? No tongue

      So vast a theme could equal, speech and thought

      Both impotent alike. If in one band

      Collected, stood the people all, who e’er

      Pour’d on Apulia’s happy soil their blood,

      Slain by the Trojans, and in that long war,^[191]

      When of the rings the measured booty made

      A pile so high, as Rome’s historian writes

      Who errs not; with the multitude, that felt

      The griding force of Guiscard’s Norman steel,^[192]

      And those the rest,^[193] whose bones are gather’d yet

      At Ceperano, there where treachery

      Branded the Apulian name, or where beyond

      Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo,^[194] without arms

      The old Alardo conquer’d; and his limbs

      One were to show transpierced, another his

      Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this

      Were but a thing of naught, to the hideous sight

      Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost

      Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide

      As one I mark’d, torn from the chin throughout

      Down to the hinder passage: ’twixt the legs

      Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay

      Open to view, and wretched ventricle,

      That turns the englutted aliment to dross.

      Whilst eagerly I fix on him my gaze,

      He eyed me, with his hands laid his breast bare,

      And cried, “Now mark how I do rip me: lo!

      How is Mohammed mangled: before me

      Walks Ali^[195] weeping, from the chin his face

      Cleft to the forelock; and the others all,

      Whom here thou seest, while they lived, did sow

      Scandal and schism, and therefore thus are rent.

      A fiend is here behind, who with his sword

      Hacks us thus cruelly, slivering again

      Each of this ream, when we have compast round

      The dismal way; for first our gashes close

      Ere we repass before him. But, say who

      Art thou, that standest musing on the rock,

      Haply so lingering to delay the pain

      Sentenced upon thy crimes.” “Him death not yet,”

      My guide rejoin’d, “hath overta’en, nor sin

      Conducts to torment; but, that he may make

      Full trial of your state, I who am dead

      Must through the depths of Hell, from orb to orb

      Conduct him. Trust my words; for they are true.”

      More than a hundred spirits, when that they heard,

      Stood in the foss to mark me through amaze

      Forgetful of their pangs. “Thou, who perchance

      Shalt СКАЧАТЬ