The Divine Comedy (Complete Annotated Edition). Dante Alighieri

      “What art thou pond’ring?” I in answer thus:

      “Alas! by what sweet thoughts, what fond desire

      Must they at length to that ill pass have reach’d!”

      Then turning, I to them my speech address’d.

And thus began: “Francesca!3 your sad fate

      Even to tears my grief and pity moves.

      But tell me; in the time of your sweet sighs,

      By what, and how love granted, that ye knew

      Your yet uncertain wishes?” She replied:

      “No greater grief than to remember days

      Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand! That kens

      Thy learn’d instructor. Yet so eagerly

      If thou art bent to know the primal root,

      From whence our love gat being, I will do,

      As one, who weeps and tells his tale. One day

For our delight we read of Lancelot,4

      How him love thrall’d. Alone we were, and no

      Suspicion near us. Ofttimes by that reading

      Our eyes were drawn together, and the hue

      Fled from our alter’d cheek. But at one point

      Alone we fell. When of that smile we read,

      The wished smile, rapturously kiss’d

      By one so deep in love, then he, who ne’er

      From me shall separate, at once my lips

      All trembling kiss’d. The book and writer both

      Were love’s purveyors. In its leaves that day

      We read no more.” While thus one spirit spake,

      The other wail’d so sorely, that heartstruck

      I through compassion fainting, seem’d not far

      From death, and like a corpse fell to the ground.

      Footnotes

1 “The land.” Ravenna.

2 “Caïna.” The place to which murderers are doomed.

3 “Francesca.” Francesca, the daughter of Guido da Polenta, Lord of Ravenna, was given by her father in marriage to Gianciotto, son of Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, a man of extraordinary courage, but deformed in his person. His brother Paolo, who unhappily possessed those graces which the husband of Francesca wanted, engaged her affections; and being taken in adultery, they were both put to death by the enraged Gianciotto.

4 “Lancelot.” One of the Knights of the Round Table, and the lover of Ginevra, or Guinever, celebrated in romance. The incident alluded to seems to have made a strong impression on the imagination of Dante, who introduces it again, in the Paradise, Canto xvi.

      Canto VI

       Table of Contents

      ARGUMENT.—On his recovery, the Poet finds himself in the third circle, where the gluttonous are punished. Their torment is, to lie in the mire, under a continual and heavy storm of hail, snow, and discolored water; Cerberus, meanwhile barking over them with his threefold throat, and rending them piecemeal. One of these, who on earth was named Ciacco, foretells the divisions with which Florence is about to be distracted. Dante proposes a question to his guide, who solves it; and they proceed toward the fourth circle.

      MY sense reviving, that erewhile had droop’d

      With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief

      O’ercame me wholly, straight around I see

      New torments, new tormented souls, which way

      Soe’er I move, or turn, or bend my sight.

      In the third circle I arrive, of show’rs

      Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang’d

      For ever, both in kind and in degree.

      Large hail, discolour’d water, sleety flaw

      Through the dun midnight air stream’d down amain:

      Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell.

      Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange,

      Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog

      Over the multitude immers’d beneath.

      His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard,

      His belly large, and claw’d the hands, with which

      He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs

      Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs,

      Under the rainy deluge, with one side

      The other screening, oft they roll them round,

A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm1

      Descried us, savage Cerberus, he op’d

      His jaws, and the fangs show’d us; not a limb

      Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms

      Expanding on the ground, thence filled with earth

      Rais’d them, and cast it in his ravenous maw.

      E’en as a dog, that yelling bays for food

      His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall

      His fury, bent alone with eager haste

      To swallow it; so dropp’d the loathsome cheeks

      Of demon Cerberus, who thund’ring stuns

      The spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain.

      We, o’er the shades thrown prostrate by the brunt

      Of the heavy tempest passing, set our feet

      Upon their emptiness, that substance seem’d.

      They all along the earth extended lay

      Save one, that sudden rais’d himself to sit,

      Soon as that way he saw us pass. “O thou!”

      He cried, “who through the infernal shades art led,

      Own, if again thou know’st me. Thou wast fram’d

      Or ere my frame was broken.” I replied:

      “The anguish thou endur’st perchance so takes

      Thy form from my remembrance, that it seems

      As if I saw thee never. But inform

      Me who thou art, that in a place so sad

      Art set, and in such torment, that although