Divine Comedy (Illustrated Edition). Dante Alighieri

a meadow of fresh verdure.

      People were there with solemn eyes and slow,

       Of great authority in their countenance;

       They spake but seldom, and with gentle voices.

      Thus we withdrew ourselves upon one side

       Into an opening luminous and lofty,

       So that they all of them were visible.

      There opposite, upon the green enamel,

       Were pointed out to me the mighty spirits,

       Whom to have seen I feel myself exalted.

      I saw Electra with companions many,

       'Mongst whom I knew both Hector and Aeneas,

       Caesar in armour with gerfalcon eyes;

      I saw Camilla and Penthesilea

       On the other side, and saw the King Latinus,

       Who with Lavinia his daughter sat;

      I saw that Brutus who drove Tarquin forth,

       Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia,

       And saw alone, apart, the Saladin.

      When I had lifted up my brows a little,

       The Master I beheld of those who know,

       Sit with his philosophic family.

      All gaze upon him, and all do him honour.

       There I beheld both Socrates and Plato,

       Who nearer him before the others stand;

      Democritus, who puts the world on chance,

       Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales,

       Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus;

      Of qualities I saw the good collector,

       Hight Dioscorides; and Orpheus saw I,

       Tully and Livy, and moral Seneca,

      Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy,

       Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna,

       Averroes, who the great Comment made.

      I cannot all of them pourtray in full,

       Because so drives me onward the long theme,

       That many times the word comes short of fact.

      The sixfold company in two divides;

       Another way my sapient Guide conducts me

       Forth from the quiet to the air that trembles;

      And to a place I come where nothing shines.

      Canto V. The Second Circle: The Wanton. Minos. The Infernal Hurricane. Francesca da Rimini.

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      Thus I descended out of the first circle

       Down to the second, that less space begirds,

       And so much greater dole, that goads to wailing.

      There standeth Minos horribly, and snarls;

       Examines the transgressions at the entrance;

       Judges, and sends according as he girds him.

      I say, that when the spirit evil-born

       Cometh before him, wholly it confesses;

       And this discriminator of transgressions

      Seeth what place in Hell is meet for it;

       Girds himself with his tail as many times

       As grades he wishes it should be thrust down.

      Always before him many of them stand;

       They go by turns each one unto the judgment;

       They speak, and hear, and then are downward hurled.

      "O thou, that to this dolorous hostelry

       Comest," said Minos to me, when he saw me,

       Leaving the practice of so great an office,

      "Look how thou enterest, and in whom thou trustest;

       Let not the portal's amplitude deceive thee."

       And unto him my Guide: "Why criest thou too?

      Do not impede his journey fate-ordained;

       It is so willed there where is power to do

       That which is willed; and ask no further question."

      And now begin the dolesome notes to grow

       Audible unto me; now am I come

       There where much lamentation strikes upon me.

      I came into a place mute of all light,

       Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest,

       If by opposing winds 't is combated.

      The infernal hurricane that never rests

       Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;

       Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.

      When they arrive before the precipice,

       There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments,

       There they blaspheme the puissance divine.

      I understood that unto such a torment

       The carnal malefactors were condemned,

       Who reason subjugate to appetite.

      And as the wings of starlings bear them on

       In the cold season in large band and full,

       So doth that blast the spirits maledict;

      It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them;

       No hope doth comfort them for evermore,

       Not of repose, but even of lesser pain.

      And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays,

       Making in air a long line of themselves,

       So saw I coming, uttering lamentations,

      Shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress.

       Whereupon said I: "Master, who are those

       People, whom the black air so castigates?"

      "The first of those, of whom intelligence

       Thou fain wouldst have," then said he unto me,

       "The empress was of many languages.

      To sensual vices she was so abandoned,

       That lustful she made licit in her law,

       To remove the blame to which she had been led.

      She is Semiramis, of whom we read

       That she succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse;

       She held the land which now the Sultan rules.

      The next is she who killed herself for love,

       And broke faith with