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

without were none

      But deep that stream beyond their wading spread,

      And closed those gates beyond their breach had been,

      Had they sought entry with us.

      Of coolest green

      Stretched the wide lawns we midmost found, for there,

      Intolerant of itself, was Hell made fair

      To accord with its containing.

      Grave, austere,

      Quiet-voiced and slow, of seldom words were they

      That walked that verdure.

      To a place aside

      Open, and light, and high, we passed, and here

      Looked downward on the lawns, in clear survey

      Of such great spirits as are my glory and pride

      That once I saw them.

      There, direct in view,

      Electra passed, among her sons. I knew

      Hector and Æneas there; and Cæsar too

      Was of them, armed and falcon-eyed; and there

      Camilla and Penthesilea. Near there sate

      Lavinia, with her sire the Latian king;

      Brutus, who drave the Tarquin; and Lucrece

      Julia, Cornelia, Marcia, and their kin;

      And, by himself apart, the Saladin.

      Somewhat beyond I looked. A place more high

      Than where these heroes moved I gazed, and knew

      The Master of reasoned thought, whose hand withdrew

      The curtain of the intellect, and bared

      The secret things of nature; while anigh,

      But lowlier, grouped the greatest names that shared

      His searchings. All regard and all revere

      They gave him. Plato there, and Socrates

      I marked, who closeliest reached his height; and near

      Democritus, who dreamed a world of chance

      Born blindly in the whirl of circumstance;

      And Anaxagoras, Diogenes,

      Thales, Heraclitus, Empedocles,

      Zeno, were there; and Dioscorides

      Who searched the healing powers of herbs and trees;

      And Orpheus, Tullius, Livius, Seneca,

      Euclid and Ptolemæus; Avicenna,

      Galen, Hippocrates; Averrhoës,

      The Master’s great interpreter,—but these

      Are few to those I saw, an endless dream

      Of shades before whom Hell quietened and cowered. My theme,

      With thronging recollections of mighty names

      That there I marked impedes me. All too long

      They chase me, envious that my burdened song

      Forgets.—But onward moves my guide anew:

      The light behind us fades: the six are two:

      Again the shuddering air, the cries of Hell

      Compassed, and where we walked the darkness fell.

      CANTO V

      MOST like the spirals of a pointed shell,

      But separate each, go downward, hell from hell,

      The ninefold circles of the damned; but each

      Smaller, concentrate in its greater pain,

      Than that which overhangs it.

      Those who reach

      The second whorl, on entering, learn their bane

      Where Minos, hideous, sits and snarls. He hears,

      Decides, and as he girds himself they go.

      Before his seat each ill-born spirit appears

      And tells its tale of evil, loath or no,

      While he, their judge, of all sins cognizant,

      Hears, and around himself his circling tail

      Twists to the number of the depths below

      To which they doom themselves in telling.

      Alway’

      The crowding sinners: their turn they wait: they show

      Their guilt: the circles of his tail convey

      Their doom: and downward they are whirled away.

      “O thou who callest at this doleful inn,”

      Cried Minos to me, while the child of sin

      That stood confessing before him, trembling stayed,

      “Heed where thou enterest in thy trust, nor say,

      I walk in safety, for the width of way

      Suffices.”

      But my guide the answer took,

      “Why dost thou cry? or leave thine ordered trade

      For that which nought belongs thee? Hinder not

      His destined path. For where he goeth is willed,

      Where that is willed prevaileth.”

      Now was filled

      The darker air with wailing. Wailing shook

      My soul to hear it. Where we entered now

      No light attempted. Only sound arose,

      As ocean with the tortured air contends,

      What time intolerable tempest rends

      The darkness; so the shrieking winds oppose

      For ever, and bear they, as they swerve and sweep,

      The doomed disastrous spirits, and whirl aloft,

      Backward, and down, nor any rest allow,

      Nor pause of such contending wraths as oft

      Batter them against the precipitous sides, and there

      The shrieks and moanings quench the screaming air,

      The cries of their blaspheming.

      These are they

      That lust made sinful. As the starlings rise

      At autumn, darkening all the colder skies,

      In crowded troops their wings up-bear, so here

      These evil-doers on each contending blast

      Were lifted upward, whirled, and downward cast,

      And swept around unceasing. Striving airs

      Lift them, and hurl, nor ever hope is theirs

      Of rest or respite or decreasing pains,

      But like the long streaks of the calling cranes

      So came they wailing down the winds, to meet

      Upsweeping blasts that ever backward beat

      Or sideward flung them on their walls. And I—

      “Master who are they next that drive anigh

      So scourged amidst the blackness?”

      “These,” he said,

      “So