Innocence Once Lost - Religious Classics Collection. Джон Мильтон

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">       And the city of Bacchus had become enslaved,

       She a long season wandered through the world.

      Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake

       At the Alp's foot that shuts in Germany

       Over Tyrol, and has the name Benaco.

      By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed,

       'Twixt Garda and Val Camonica, Pennino,

       With water that grows stagnant in that lake.

      Midway a place is where the Trentine Pastor,

       And he of Brescia, and the Veronese

       Might give his blessing, if he passed that way.

      Sitteth Peschiera, fortress fair and strong,

       To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks,

       Where round about the bank descendeth lowest.

      There of necessity must fall whatever

       In bosom of Benaco cannot stay,

       And grows a river down through verdant pastures.

      Soon as the water doth begin to run,

       No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio,

       Far as Governo, where it falls in Po.

      Not far it runs before it finds a plain

       In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy,

       And oft 'tis wont in summer to be sickly.

      Passing that way the virgin pitiless

       Land in the middle of the fen descried,

       Untilled and naked of inhabitants;

      There to escape all human intercourse,

       She with her servants stayed, her arts to practise

       And lived, and left her empty body there.

      The men, thereafter, who were scattered round,

       Collected in that place, which was made strong

       By the lagoon it had on every side;

      They built their city over those dead bones,

       And, after her who first the place selected,

       Mantua named it, without other omen.

      Its people once within more crowded were,

       Ere the stupidity of Casalodi

       From Pinamonte had received deceit.

      Therefore I caution thee, if e'er thou hearest

       Originate my city otherwise,

       No falsehood may the verity defraud."

      And I: "My Master, thy discourses are

       To me so certain, and so take my faith,

       That unto me the rest would be spent coals.

      But tell me of the people who are passing,

       If any one note-worthy thou beholdest,

       For only unto that my mind reverts."

      Then said he to me: "He who from the cheek

       Thrusts out his beard upon his swarthy shoulders

       Was, at the time when Greece was void of males,

      So that there scarce remained one in the cradle,

       An augur, and with Calchas gave the moment,

       In Aulis, when to sever the first cable.

      Eryphylus his name was, and so sings

       My lofty Tragedy in some part or other;

       That knowest thou well, who knowest the whole of it.

      The next, who is so slender in the flanks,

       Was Michael Scott, who of a verity

       Of magical illusions knew the game.

      Behold Guido Bonatti, behold Asdente,

       Who now unto his leather and his thread

       Would fain have stuck, but he too late repents.

      Behold the wretched ones, who left the needle,

       The spool and rock, and made them fortune-tellers;

       They wrought their magic spells with herb and image.

      But come now, for already holds the confines

       Of both the hemispheres, and under Seville

       Touches the ocean-wave, Cain and the thorns,

      And yesternight the moon was round already;

       Thou shouldst remember well it did not harm thee

       From time to time within the forest deep."

      Thus spake he to me, and we walked the while.

      Canto XXI. The Fifth Bolgia: Peculators. The Elder of Santa Zita. Malacoda and other Devils.

       Table of Contents

      From bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things

       Of which my Comedy cares not to sing,

       We came along, and held the summit, when

      We halted to behold another fissure

       Of Malebolge and other vain laments;

       And I beheld it marvellously dark.

      As in the Arsenal of the Venetians

       Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch

       To smear their unsound vessels o'er again,

      For sail they cannot; and instead thereof

       One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks

       The ribs of that which many a voyage has made;

      One hammers at the prow, one at the stern,

       This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists,

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