The Divine Comedy (Illustrated Edition). Dante Alighieri

voice seem’d faint through long disuse of speech.

      When him in that great desert I espied,

      “Have mercy on me!” cried I out aloud,

      “Spirit! or living man! what e’er thou be!”

      He answer’d: “Now not man, man once I was,

      And born of Lombard parents, Mantuana both

      By country, when the power of Julius yet

      Was scarcely firm. At Rome my life was past

      Beneath the mild Augustus, in the time

      Of fabled deities and false. A bard

      Was I, and made Anchises’ upright son

      The subject of my song, who came from Troy,

      When the flames prey’d on Ilium’s haughty towers.

      But thou, say wherefore to such perils past

      Return’st thou? wherefore not this pleasant mount

      Ascendest, cause and source of all delight?”

      “And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring,

      From which such copious floods of eloquence

      Have issued?” I with front abash’d replied.

      “Glory and light of all the tuneful train!

      May it avail me that I long with zeal

      Have sought thy volume, and with love immense

      Have conn’d it o’er. My master thou and guide!

      Thou he from whom alone I have deriv’d

      That style, which for its beauty into fame

      Exalts me. See the beast, from whom I fled.

      O save me from her, thou illustrious sage!

      For every vein and pulse throughout my frame

      She hath made tremble.” He, soon as he saw

      That I was weeping, answer’d, “Thou must needs

      Another way pursue, if thou wouldst ’scape

      From out that savage wilderness. This beast,

      At whom thou criest, her way will suffer none

      To pass, and no less hindrance makes than death:

      So bad and so accursed in her kind,

      That never sated is her ravenous will,

      Still after food more craving than before.

      To many an animal in wedlock vile

      She fastens, and shall yet to many more,

Until that greyhound6 come, who shall destroy

      Her with sharp pain. He will not life support

      By earth nor its base metals, but by love,

      Wisdom, and virtue, and his land shall be

The land ’twixt either Feltro.7 In his might

      Shall safety to Italia’s plains arise,

      For whose fair realm, Camilla, virgin pure,

      Nisus, Euryalus, and Turnus fell.

      He with incessant chase through every town

      Shall worry, until he to hell at length

      Restore her, thence by envy first let loose.

      I for thy profit pond’ring now devise,

      That thou mayst follow me, and I thy guide

      Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,

      Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see

      Spirits of old tormented, who invoke

A second death;8 and those next view, who dwell

Content in fire,9 for that they hope to come,

      Whene’er the time may be, among the blest,

      Into whose regions if thou then desire

T’ ascend, a spirit worthier10 then I

      Must lead thee, in whose charge, when I depart,

      Thou shalt be left: for that Almighty King,

      Who reigns above, a rebel to his law,

      Adjudges me, and therefore hath decreed,

      That to his city none through me should come.

      He in all parts hath sway; there rules, there holds

      His citadel and throne. O happy those,

      Whom there he chooses!” I to him in few:

      “Bard! by that God, whom thou didst not adore,

      I do beseech thee (that this ill and worse

      I may escape) to lead me, where thou saidst,

That I Saint Peter’s gate11 may view, and those

      Who as thou tell’st, are in such dismal plight.”

      Onward he mov’d, I close his steps pursu’d.

      Footnotes

1 “In the midway.” The era of the poem is intended by these words to be fixed to the thirty-fifth year of the poet’s age, A. D. 1300. In this Convito, human life is compared to an arch or bow, the highest point of which is, in those well framed by nature, at their thirty-fifth year.

2 “That planet’s beam.” The sun.

3 “The hinder foot.” In ascending a hill the weight of the body rests on the hinder foot.

4 “A panther.” Pleasure or luxury.

5 “With those stars.” The sun was in Aries, in which sign he supposes it to have begun its course at the creation.

6 This passage has been commonly understood as a eulogium on the liberal spirit of his Veronese patron, Can Grande della Scala.

7 Verona, the country of Can della Scala, is situated between Feltro, a city in the Marca Trivigiana, and Monte Feltro, a city in the territory of Urbino.

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