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

me was this drowsiness
Suddenly by a people, that behind
Our backs already had come round to us.
And as, of old, Ismenus and Asopus875
Beside them saw at night the rush and throng,
If but the Thebans were in need of Bacchus,
So they along that circle curve their step,876
From what I saw of those approaching us,
Who by good-will and righteous love are ridden.
Full soon they were upon us, because running
Moved onward all that mighty multitude,
And two in the advance cried out, lamenting,
“Mary in haste unto the mountain ran,877
And Caesar, that he might subdue Ilerda,878
Thrust at Marseilles, and then ran into Spain.”
“Quick! quick! so that the time may not be lost
By little love!” forthwith the others cried,
“For ardor in well-doing freshens grace!”
“O folk, in whom an eager fervor now
Supplies perhaps delay and negligence,
Put by you in well-doing, through lukewarmness,
This one who lives, and truly I lie not,
Would fain go up, if but the sun relight us;
So tell us where the passage nearest is.”
These were the words of him who was my Guide;
And someone of those spirits said: “Come on
Behind us, and the opening shalt thou find;
So full of longing are we to move onward,
That stay we cannot; therefore pardon us,
If thou for churlishness our justice take.
I was San Zeno’s Abbot at Verona,879
Under the empire of good Barbarossa,880
Of whom still sorrowing Milan holds discourse;
And he has one foot in the grave already,881
Who shall erelong lament that monastery,
And sorry be of having there had power,
Because his son, in his whole body sick,
And worse in mind, and who was evil-born,
He put into the place of its true pastor.”
If more he said, or silent was, I know not,
He had already passed so far beyond us;
But this I heard, and to retain it pleased me.
And he who was in every need my succor
Said: “Turn thee hitherward; see two of them
Come fastening upon slothfulness their teeth.”882
In rear of all they shouted: “Sooner were
The people dead to whom the sea was opened,
Than their inheritors the Jordan saw;883
And those who the fatigue did not endure
Unto the issue, with Anchises’ son,884
Themselves to life withouten glory offered.”
Then when from us so separated were
Those shades, that they no longer could be seen,
Within me a new thought did entrance find,
Whence others many and diverse were born;
And so I lapsed from one into another,
That in a reverie mine eyes I closed,
And meditation into dream transmuted.885 Canto XIX

Dante’s dream of the Siren⁠—The Fifth Circle⁠—The Avaricious and Prodigal⁠—Pope Adrian V.

It was the hour when the diurnal heat886
No more can warm the coldness of the moon,
Vanquished by earth, or peradventure Saturn,887
When geomancers their Fortuna Major888
See in the orient before the dawn
Rise by a path that long remains not dim,889
There came to me in dreams a stammering woman,890
Squint in her eyes, and in her feet distorted,
With hands dissevered and of sallow hue.
I looked at her; and as the sun restores
The frigid members which the night benumbs,
Even thus my gaze did render voluble
Her tongue, and made her all erect thereafter
In little while, and the lost countenance
As love desires it so in her did color.
When in this wise she had her speech unloosed,
She ’gan to sing so, that with difficulty
Could I have turned my thoughts away from her.
“I am,” she sang, “I am the Siren sweet
Who mariners amid the main unman,
So full am I of pleasantness to hear.
I drew Ulysses from his wandering way
Unto my song, and he who dwells with me
Seldom departs so wholly I content him.”
Her mouth was not yet closed again, before
Appeared a Lady saintly and alert
Close at my side to put her to confusion.
“Virgilius, O Virgilius! who is this?”
Sternly she said; and he was drawing near
With eyes still fixed upon that modest one.
She seized the other and in front laid open,
Rending her garments, and her belly showed me;
This waked me with the stench that issued from it.
I turned mine eyes, and good Virgilius said:
“At least thrice have I called thee; rise and come;
Find we the opening by which thou mayst enter.”
I rose; and full already of high day
Were all the circles of the Sacred Mountain,
And with the new sun at our back we went.
Following behind him, I my forehead bore
Like unto one who has it laden with thought,
Who makes himself the half arch of a bridge,
When I heard say, “Come, here the passage is,”
Spoken in a manner gentle and benign,
Such as we hear not in this mortal region.
With open wings, which of a swan appeared,
Upward he turned us who thus spake to us,
Between the two walls of the solid granite.
He moved his pinions afterwards and fanned us,
Affirming those qui lugent to be blessed,
For they shall have their souls with comfort filled.891
“What aileth thee, that aye to earth thou gazest?”
To me my Guide began to say, we both
Somewhat beyond the Angel having mounted.
And I: “With such misgiving makes me go
A vision new, which bends me to itself,
So that I cannot from the thought withdraw me.”
“Didst thou behold,” he said, “that old enchantress,
Who sole above us henceforth is lamented?892
Didst thou behold how man is freed from her?
Suffice it thee, and smite earth with thy heels,893
Thine eyes lift upward to the lure, that whirls
The Eternal King with revolutions vast.”
Even as the hawk, that first his feet surveys,
Then