THE DIVINE COMEDY: Inferno, Purgatorio & Paradiso (3 Classic Translations in One Edition). Dante Alighieri

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CANTO XXVIII

       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

       When of the rings the measur'd booty made

       A pile so high, as Rome's historian writes

       Who errs not, with the multitude, that felt

       The grinding force of Guiscard's Norman steel,

       And those the rest, whose bones are gather'd yet

       At Ceperano, there where treachery

       Branded th' Apulian name, or where beyond

       Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms

       The old Alardo conquer'd; and his limbs

       One were to show transpierc'd, another his

       Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this

       Were but a thing of nought, 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 th' englutted aliment to dross.