The Battle of Darkness and Light . Джон Мильтон

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      Canto VII. The Fourth Circle: The Avaricious and the Prodigal. Plutus. Fortune and her Wheel. The Fifth Circle: The Irascible and the Sullen. Styx.

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      "Pape Satan, Pape Satan, Aleppe!"

       Thus Plutus with his clucking voice began;

       And that benignant Sage, who all things knew,

      Said, to encourage me: "Let not thy fear

       Harm thee; for any power that he may have

       Shall not prevent thy going down this crag."

      Then he turned round unto that bloated lip,

       And said: "Be silent, thou accursed wolf;

       Consume within thyself with thine own rage.

      Not causeless is this journey to the abyss;

       Thus is it willed on high, where Michael wrought

       Vengeance upon the proud adultery."

      Even as the sails inflated by the wind

       Involved together fall when snaps the mast,

       So fell the cruel monster to the earth.

      Thus we descended into the fourth chasm,

       Gaining still farther on the dolesome shore

       Which all the woe of the universe insacks.

      Justice of God, ah! who heaps up so many

       New toils and sufferings as I beheld?

       And why doth our transgression waste us so?

      As doth the billow there upon Charybdis,

       That breaks itself on that which it encounters,

       So here the folk must dance their roundelay.

      Here saw I people, more than elsewhere, many,

       On one side and the other, with great howls,

       Rolling weights forward by main force of chest.

      They clashed together, and then at that point

       Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde,

       Crying, "Why keepest?" and, "Why squanderest thou?"

      Thus they returned along the lurid circle

       On either hand unto the opposite point,

       Shouting their shameful metre evermore.

      Then each, when he arrived there, wheeled about

       Through his half-circle to another joust;

       And I, who had my heart pierced as it were,

      Exclaimed: "My Master, now declare to me

       What people these are, and if all were clerks,

       These shaven crowns upon the left of us."

      And he to me: "All of them were asquint

       In intellect in the first life, so much

       That there with measure they no spending made.

      Clearly enough their voices bark it forth,

       Whene'er they reach the two points of the circle,

       Where sunders them the opposite defect.

      Clerks those were who no hairy covering

       Have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals,

       In whom doth Avarice practise its excess."

      And I: "My Master, among such as these

       I ought forsooth to recognise some few,

       Who were infected with these maladies."

      And he to me: "Vain thought thou entertainest;

       The undiscerning life which made them sordid

       Now makes them unto all discernment dim.

      Forever shall they come to these two buttings;

       These from the sepulchre shall rise again

       With the fist closed, and these with tresses shorn.

      Ill giving and ill keeping the fair world

       Have ta'en from them, and placed them in this scuffle;

       Whate'er it be, no words adorn I for it.

      Now canst thou, Son, behold the transient farce

       Of goods that are committed unto Fortune,

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