Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One. Данте Алигьери

      Above that dark was no relieving star.

      If yet that terrored night I think or say,

      As death’s cold hands its fears resuming are.

      Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell,

      The hopeless, pathless, lightless hours forgot,

      I turn my tale to that which next befell,

      When the dawn opened, and the night was not.

      The hollowed blackness of that waste, God wot,

      Shrank, thinned, and ceased. A blinding splendour hot

      Flushed the great height toward which my footsteps fell,

      And though it kindled from the nether hell,

      Or from the Star that all men leads, alike

      It showed me where the great dawn-glories strike

      The wide east, and the utmost peaks of snow.

      How first I entered on that path astray,

      Beset with sleep, I know not. This I know.

      When gained my feet the upward, lighted way,

      I backward gazed, as one the drowning sea,

      The deep strong tides, has baffled, and panting lies,

      On the shelved shore, and turns his eyes to see

      The league-wide wastes that held him. So mine eyes

      Surveyed that fear, the while my wearied frame

      Rested, and ever my heart’s tossed lake became

      More quiet.

      Then from that pass released, which yet

      With living feet had no man left, I set

      My forward steps aslant the steep, that so,

      My right foot still the lower, I climbed.

      Below

      No more I gazed. Around, a slope of sand

      Was sterile of all growth on either hand,

      Or moving life, a spotted pard except,

      That yawning rose, and stretched, and purred and leapt

      So closely round my feet, that scarce I kept

      The course I would.

      That sleek and lovely thing,

      The broadening light, the breath of morn and spring,

      The sun, that with his stars in Aries lay,

      As when Divine Love on Creation’s day

      First gave these fair things motion, all at one

      Made lightsome hope; but lightsome hope was none

      When down the slope there came with lifted head

      And back-blown mane and caverned mouth and red,

      A lion, roaring, all the air ashake

      That heard his hunger. Upward flight to take

      No heart was mine, for where the further way

      Mine anxious eyes explored, a she-wolf lay,

      That licked lean flanks, and waited. Such was she

      In aspect ruthless that I quaked to see,

      And where she lay among her bones had brought

      So many to grief before, that all my thought

      Aghast turned backward to the sunless night

      I left. But while I plunged in headlong flight

      To that most feared before, a shade, or man

      (Either he seemed), obstructing where I ran,

      Called to me with a voice that few should know,

      Faint from forgetful silence, “Where ye go,

      Take heed. Why turn ye from the upward way?”

      I cried, “Or come ye from warm earth, or they

      The grave hath taken, in my mortal need

      Have mercy thou!”

      He answered, “Shade am I,

      That once was man; beneath the Lombard sky,

      In the late years of Julius born, and bred

      In Mantua, till my youthful steps were led

      To Rome, where yet the false gods lied to man;

      And when the great Augustan age began,

      I wrote the tale of Ilium burnt, and how

      Anchises’ son forth-pushed a venturous prow,

      Seeking unknown seas. But in what mood art thou

      To thus return to all the ills ye fled,

      The while the mountain of thy hope ahead

      Lifts into light, the source and cause of all

      Delectable things that may to man befall?”

      I answered, “Art thou then that Virgil, he

      From whom all grace of measured speech in me

      Derived? O glorious and far-guiding star!

      Now may the love-led studious hours and long

      In which I learnt how rich thy wonders are,

      Master and Author mine of Light and Song,

      Befriend me now, who knew thy voice, that few

      Yet hearken. All the name my work hath won

      Is thine of right, from whom I learned. To thee,

      Abashed, I grant it… Why the mounting sun

      No more I seek, ye scarce should ask, who see

      The beast that turned me, nor faint hope have I

      To force that passage if thine aid deny.”

      He answered, “Would ye leave this wild and live,

      Strange road is ours, for where the she-wolf lies

      Shall no man pass, except the path he tries

      Her craft entangle. No way fugitive

      Avoids the seeking of her greeds, that give

      Insatiate hunger, and such vice perverse

      As makes her leaner while she feeds, and worse

      Her craving. And the beasts with which she breeds,

      The noisome numerous beasts her lusts require,

      Bare all the desirable lands in which she feeds;

      Nor shall lewd feasts and lewder matings tire

      Until she woos, in evil hour for her,

      The wolfhound that shall rend her. His desire

      Is not for rapine, as the promptings stir

      Of her base heart; but wisdoms, and devoirs

      Of manhood, and love’s rule, his thoughts prefer.

      The Italian lowlands he shall reach and save,

      For which Camilla of old, the virgin brave,

      Turnus and Nisus died in strife. His chase

      He shall not cease, nor any cowering-place

      Her fear shall find her, till he drive her back,

      From city to city exiled, from wrack to wrack

      Slain out of life, to find the native