Innocence Once Lost - Religious Classics Collection. Джон Мильтон

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      When I before the morrow was awake,

       Moaning amid their sleep I heard my sons

       Who with me were, and asking after bread.

      Cruel indeed art thou, if yet thou grieve not,

       Thinking of what my heart foreboded me,

       And weep'st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at?

      They were awake now, and the hour drew nigh

       At which our food used to be brought to us,

       And through his dream was each one apprehensive;

      And I heard locking up the under door

       Of the horrible tower; whereat without a word

       I gazed into the faces of my sons.

      I wept not, I within so turned to stone;

       They wept; and darling little Anselm mine

       Said: 'Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee?'

      Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made

       All of that day, nor yet the night thereafter,

       Until another sun rose on the world.

      As now a little glimmer made its way

       Into the dolorous prison, and I saw

       Upon four faces my own very aspect,

      Both of my hands in agony I bit;

       And, thinking that I did it from desire

       Of eating, on a sudden they uprose,

      And said they: 'Father, much less pain 'twill give us

       If thou do eat of us; thyself didst clothe us

       With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off.'

      I calmed me then, not to make them more sad.

       That day we all were silent, and the next.

       Ah! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open?

      When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo

       Threw himself down outstretched before my feet,

       Saying, 'My father, why dost thou not help me?'

      And there he died; and, as thou seest me,

       I saw the three fall, one by one, between

       The fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me,

      Already blind, to groping over each,

       And three days called them after they were dead;

       Then hunger did what sorrow could not do."

      When he had said this, with his eyes distorted,

       The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth,

       Which, as a dog's, upon the bone were strong.

      Ah! Pisa, thou opprobrium of the people

       Of the fair land there where the 'Si' doth sound,

       Since slow to punish thee thy neighbours are,

      Let the Capraia and Gorgona move,

       And make a hedge across the mouth of Arno

       That every person in thee it may drown!

      For if Count Ugolino had the fame

       Of having in thy castles thee betrayed,

       Thou shouldst not on such cross have put his sons.

      Guiltless of any crime, thou modern Thebes!

       Their youth made Uguccione and Brigata,

       And the other two my song doth name above!

      We passed still farther onward, where the ice

       Another people ruggedly enswathes,

       Not downward turned, but all of them reversed.

      Weeping itself there does not let them weep,

       And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes

       Turns itself inward to increase the anguish;

      Because the earliest tears a cluster form,

       And, in the manner of a crystal visor,

       Fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow full.

      And notwithstanding that, as in a callus,

       Because of cold all sensibility

       Its station had abandoned in my face,

      Still it appeared to me I felt some wind;

       Whence I: "My Master, who sets this in motion?

       Is not below here every vapour quenched?"

      Whence he to me: "Full soon shalt thou be where

       Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this,

       Seeing the cause which raineth down the blast."

      And one of the wretches of the frozen crust

       Cried out to us: "O souls so merciless

       That the last post is given unto you,

      Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I

       May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart

       A little, e'er the weeping recongeal."

      Whence I to him: "If thou wouldst have me help thee

       Say who thou wast; and if I free thee not,

       May I go to the bottom of the ice."

      Then he replied: "I am Friar Alberigo;

       He am I of the fruit of the bad garden,

       Who here a date am getting for my fig."

      "O," said I to him, "now art thou, too, dead?"

       And he to me: "How may my body fare

       Up in the world, no knowledge I possess.

      Such an advantage has this Ptolomaea,

       That oftentimes the soul descendeth here

       Sooner than Atropos in motion СКАЧАТЬ