The Divine Comedy (Illustrated Edition). Dante Alighieri

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      While to the lower space with backward step

      I fell, my ken discern’d the form one of one,

      Whose voice seem’d faint through long disuse of speech.

      When him in that great desert I espied,

      “Have mercy on me!” cried I out aloud,

      “Spirit! or living man! what e’er thou be!”

      He answer’d: “Now not man, man once I was,

      And born of Lombard parents, Mantuana both

      By country, when the power of Julius yet

      Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was past

      Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time

      Of fabled deities and false. A bard

      Was I, and made Anchises’ upright son

      The subject of my song, who came from Troy,

      When the flames prey’d on Ilium’s haughty towers.

      But thou, say wherefore to such perils past

      Return’st thou? wherefore not this pleasant mount

      Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?”

      “And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring,

      From which such copious floods of eloquence

      Have issued?” I with front abash’d replied.

      “Glory and light of all the tuneful train!

      May it avail me that I long with zeal

      Have sought thy volume, and with love immense

      Have conn’d it o’er. My master thou and guide!

      Thou he from whom alone I have deriv’d

      That style, which for its beauty into fame

      Exalts me. See the beast, from whom I fled.

      O save me from her, thou illustrious sage!

      For every vein and pulse throughout my frame

      She hath made tremble.” He, soon as he saw

      That I was weeping, answer’d, “Thou must needs

      Another way pursue, if thou wouldst ’scape

      From out that savage wilderness. This beast,

      At whom thou criest, her way will suffer none

      To pass, and no less hindrance makes than death:

      So bad and so accursed in her kind,

      That never sated is her ravenous will,

      Still after food more craving than before.

      To many an animal in wedlock vile

      She fastens, and shall yet to many more,

Until that greyhound6 come, who shall destroy

      Her with sharp pain. He will not life support

      By earth nor its base metals, but by love,

      Wisdom, and virtue, and his land shall be

The land ’twixt either Feltro.7 In his might

      Shall safety to Italia’s plains arise,

      For whose fair realm, Camilla, virgin pure,

      Nisus, Euryalus, and Turnus fell.

      He with incessant chase through every town

      Shall worry, until he to hell at length

      Restore her, thence by envy first let loose.

      I for thy profit pond’ring now devise,

      That thou mayst follow me, and I thy guide

      Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,

      Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see

      Spirits of old tormented, who invoke

A second death;8 and those next view, who dwell

Content in fire,СКАЧАТЬ