The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri (well read books .txt) 📗

The Divine Comedy

By Dante Alighieri.

Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Epigraph The Divine Comedy Inferno Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV Canto V Canto VI Canto VII Canto VIII Canto IX Canto X Canto XI Canto XII Canto XIII Canto XIV Canto XV Canto XVI Canto XVII Canto XVIII Canto XIX Canto XX Canto XXI Canto XXII Canto XXIII Canto XXIV Canto XXV Canto XXVI Canto XXVII Canto XXVIII Canto XXIX Canto XXX Canto XXXI Canto XXXII Canto XXXIII Canto XXXIV Purgatorio Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV Canto V Canto VI Canto VII Canto VIII Canto IX Canto X Canto XI Canto XII Canto XIII Canto XIV Canto XV Canto XVI Canto XVII Canto XVIII Canto XIX Canto XX Canto XXI Canto XXII Canto XXIII Canto XXIV Canto XXV Canto XXVI Canto XXVII Canto XXVIII Canto XXIX Canto XXX Canto XXXI Canto XXXII Canto XXXIII Paradiso Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV Canto V Canto VI Canto VII Canto VIII Canto IX Canto X Canto XI Canto XII Canto XIII Canto XIV Canto XV Canto XVI Canto XVII Canto XVIII Canto XIX Canto XX Canto XXI Canto XXII Canto XXIII Canto XXIV Canto XXV Canto XXVI Canto XXVII Canto XXVIII Canto XXIX Canto XXX Canto XXXI Canto XXXII Canto XXXIII Endnotes List of Illustrations Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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I follow here the footing of thy feet
That with thy meaning so I may the rather meet

Spenser The Divine Comedy Inferno1

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
So, as I enter here from day to day,
And leave my burden at this minster gate,
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray,
The tumult of the time disconsolate
To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This medieval miracle of song!

Canto I

The dark forest⁠—The hill of Difficulty⁠—The panther, the lion, and the wolf⁠—Virgil.

Midway upon the journey of our life2
I found myself within a forest dark,3
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.
But after I had reached a mountain’s foot,4
At that point where the valley terminated,5
Which had with consternation pierced my heart,
Upward I looked, and I beheld its shoulders,
Vested already with that planet’s rays6
Which leadeth others right by every road.
Then was the fear a little quieted
That in my heart’s lake had endured throughout7
The night, which I had passed so piteously.
And even as he, who, with distressful breath,
Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,
Turns to the water perilous and gazes;
So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward,
Turn itself back to re-behold the pass
Which never yet a living person left.8
After my weary body I had rested,
The way resumed I on the desert slope,
So that the firm foot ever