Innocence Once Lost - Religious Classics Collection. Джон Мильтон

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      Canto XX. The Fourth Bolgia: Soothsayers. Amphiaraus, Tiresias, Aruns, Manto, Eryphylus, Michael Scott, Guido Bonatti, and Asdente. Virgil reproaches Dante's Pity. Mantua's Foundation.

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      Of a new pain behoves me to make verses

       And give material to the twentieth canto

       Of the first song, which is of the submerged.

      I was already thoroughly disposed

       To peer down into the uncovered depth,

       Which bathed itself with tears of agony;

      And people saw I through the circular valley,

       Silent and weeping, coming at the pace

       Which in this world the Litanies assume.

      As lower down my sight descended on them,

       Wondrously each one seemed to be distorted

       From chin to the beginning of the chest;

      For tow'rds the reins the countenance was turned,

       And backward it behoved them to advance,

       As to look forward had been taken from them.

      Perchance indeed by violence of palsy

       Some one has been thus wholly turned awry;

       But I ne'er saw it, nor believe it can be.

      As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit

       From this thy reading, think now for thyself

       How I could ever keep my face unmoistened,

      When our own image near me I beheld

       Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes

       Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts.

      Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak

       Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said

       To me: "Art thou, too, of the other fools?

      Here pity lives when it is wholly dead;

       Who is a greater reprobate than he

       Who feels compassion at the doom divine?

      Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom

       Opened the earth before the Thebans' eyes;

       Wherefore they all cried: 'Whither rushest thou,

      Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?'

       And downward ceased he not to fall amain

       As far as Minos, who lays hold on all.

      See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders!

       Because he wished to see too far before him

       Behind he looks, and backward goes his way:

      Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed,

       When from a male a female he became,

       His members being all of them transformed;

      And afterwards was forced to strike once more

       The two entangled serpents with his rod,

       Ere he could have again his manly plumes.

      That Aruns is, who backs the other's belly,

       Who in the hills of Luni, there where grubs

       The Carrarese who houses underneath,

      Among the marbles white a cavern had

       For his abode; whence to behold the stars

       And sea, the view was not cut off from him.

      And she there, who is covering up her breasts,

       Which thou beholdest not, with loosened tresses,

       And on that side has all the hairy skin,

      Was Manto, who made quest through many lands,

       Afterwards tarried there where I was born;

       Whereof I would thou list to me a little.

      After her father had from life departed,

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