That, by effect of his malicious thoughts,

Trusting in him I was made prisoner,
And after put to death, I need not say;
But ne'ertheless what thou canst not have heard,
That is to say, how cruel was my death,

Hear shalt thou, and shalt know if he has wronged me.
A narrow perforation in the mew,

Which bears because of me the title of Famine,

And in which others still must be locked up,
Had shown me through its opening many moons
Already, when I dreamed the evil dream
Which of the future rent for me the veil.
This one appeared to me as lord and master,
Hunting the wolf and whelps upon the mountain
For which the Pisans cannot Lucca see.

With sleuth-hounds gaunt, and eager, and well trained,
Gualandi with Sismondi and Lanfranchi

He had sent out before him to the front.

After brief course seemed unto me forespent

The father and the sons, and with sharp tushes It seemed to me I saw their flanks ripped open. When I before the morrow was awake,

Moaning amid their sleep I heard my sons Who with me were, and asking after bread. Cruel indeed art thou, if yet thou grieve not,

Thinking of what my heart foreboded me,

And weep'st thou not, what art thou wont to weep at?

They were awake now, and the hour drew nigh

Of the horrible tower; whereat without a word

At which our food used to be brought to us,

And through his dream was each one apprehensive;

45

And I heard locking up the under door

I wept not, I within so turned to stone;

Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made

I gazed into the faces of my sons.

They wept; and darling little Anselm mine

Said: 'Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee?'

All of that day, nor yet the night thereafter,

Until another sun rose on the world.

As now a little glimmer made its way

Into the dolorous prison, and I saw
Upon four faces my own very aspect,

Both of my hands in agony I bit;

And, thinking that I did it from desire
Of eating, on a sudden they uprose,

And said they: 'Father, much less pain 'twill give us

If thou do eat of us; thyself didst clothe us
With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off.'
I calmed me then, not to make them more sad.

That day we all were silent, and the next.
Ah! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not open?
When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo

Threw himself down outstretched before my feet,
Saying, 'My father, why dost thou not help me?'

And there he died; and, as thou seest me,

I saw the three fall, one by one, between
The fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me,
Already blind, to groping over each,

And three days called them after they were dead;
Then hunger did what sorrow could not do.
When he had said this, with his eyes distorted,

The wretched skull resumed he with his teeth,
Which, as a dog's, upon the bone were strong.
Ah! Pisa, thou opprobrium of the people

Of the fair land there where the Sì doth sound,
Since slow to punish thee thy neighbours are,

Let the Capraia and Gorgona move,

And make a hedge across the mouth of Arno,
That every person in thee it may drown!

For if Count Ugolino had the fame

Of having in thy castles thee betrayed,

Thou shouldst not on such cross have put his sons.
Guiltless of any crime, thou modern Thebes !

Their youth made Uguccione and Brigata,
And the other two my song doth name above!
We passed still farther onward, where the ice
Another people ruggedly enswathes,

Not downward turned, but all of them reversed.
Weeping itself there does not let them weep,

And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes Turns itself inward to increase the anguish ; Because the earliest tears a cluster form,

And, in the manner of a crystal visor, Fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow full. And notwithstanding that, as in a callus, Because of cold all sensibility

Its station had abandoned in my face,

Still it appeared to me I felt some wind;

Whence I: "My Master, who sets this in motion ?
Is not below here every vapour quenched ?"

Whence he to me : "Full soon shalt thou be where

Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this,
Seeing the cause which raineth down the blast."
And one of the wretches of the frozen crust

Cried out to us: "O souls so merciless
That the last post is given unto you,

Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I

May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart
A little, e'er the weeping recongeal."

Whence I to him: "If thou wouldst have me help thee,
Say who thou wast; and if I free thee not,
May I go to the bottom of the ice."

Then he replied: "I am Friar Alberigo ;

He am I of the fruit of the bad garden,
Who here a date am getting for my fig."
"O," said I to him, "now art thou, too, dead?”
And he to me : "How may my body fare
Up in the world, no knowledge I possess.
Such an advantage has this Ptolomæa,

That oftentimes the soul descendeth here
Sooner than Atropos in motion sets it.
And, that thou mayest more willingly remove
From off my countenance these glassy tears,
Know that as soon as any soul betrays

As I have done, his body by a demon

Is taken from him, who thereafter rules it,
Until his time has wholly been revolved.

Itself down rushes into such a cistern;

And still perchance above appears the body
Of yonder shade, that winters here behind me.

135

This thou shouldst know, if thou hast just come down ;
It is Ser Branca d' Oria, and many years

Have passed away since he was thus locked up."

"I think," said I to him, "thou dost deceive me; For Branca d' Oria is not dead as yet,

140

And eats, and drinks, and sleeps, and puts on clothes."

"In moat above," said he, "of Malebranche,

There where is boiling the tenacious pitch,

When this one left a devil in his stead

As yet had Michel Zanche not arrived,

In his own body and one near of kin,

Who made together with him the betrayal.

But hitherward stretch out thy hand forthwith,
Open mine eyes ;" -and open them I did not,
And to be rude to him was courtesy.

Ah, Genoese! ye men at variance

With every virtue, full of every vice!

Wherefore are ye not scattered from the world?

For with the vilest spirit of Romagna

I found of you one such, who for his deeds
In soul already in Cocytus bathes,
And still above in body seems alive!

153

CANTO XXXIV.

"VEXILLA Regis prodeunt Inferni

Towards us;

therefore look in front of thee,'
My Master said, "if thou discernest him."
As, when there breathes a heavy fog, or when
Our hemisphere is darkening into night,
Appears far off a mill the wind is turning,
Methought that such a building then I saw ;

And, for the wind, I drew myself behind
My Guide, because there was no other shelter.
Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it,

There where the shades were wholly covered up,
And glimmered through like unto straws in glass.

Some prone are lying, others stand erect,

This with the head, and that one with the soles;
Another, bow-like, face to feet inverts.

When in advance so far we had proceeded,

That it my Master pleased to show to me

The creature who once had the beauteous semblance,

He from before me moved and made me stop,

Saying: "Behold Dis, and behold the place
Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself."

How frozen I became and powerless then,

Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not,
Because all language would be insufficient.
I did not die, and I alive remained not;

Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit,
What I became, being of both deprived.

The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous

From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice;
And better with a giant I compare

Than do the giants with those arms of his ;
Consider now how great must be that whole,
Which unto such a part conforms itself.

35

45

55

Were he as fair once, as he now is foul,

And lifted up his brow against his Maker, Well may proceed from him all tribulation. O, what a marvel it appeared to me,

When I beheld three faces on his head!

The one in front, and that vermilion was;

Two were the others, that were joined with this
Above the middle part of either shoulder,
And they were joined together at the crest;
And the right-hand one seemed 'twixt white and yellow;
The left was such to look upon as those

Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward.
Underneath each came forth two mighty wings,
Such as befitting were so great a bird;
Sails of the sea I never saw so large.

No feathers had they, but as of a bat

Their fashion was; and he was waving them,
So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom.
Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed.

With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins
Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel.
At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching
A sinner, in the manner of a brake,

So that he three of them tormented thus.
To him in front the biting was as naught

Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine Utterly stripped of all the skin remained. That soul up there which has the greatest pain," The Master said, "is Judas Iscariot;

With head inside, he plies his legs without.

Of the two others, who head downward are,

The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus ;
See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word.
And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius.
But night is reascending, and 'tis time

That we depart, for we have seen the whole."
As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck,
And he the vantage seized of time and ¡'ace,
And when the wings were opened wide apart,

He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides;

From fell to fell descended downward then
Between the thick hair and the frozen crust.

When we were come to where the thigh revolves
Exactly on the thickness of the haunch,

The Guide, with labour and with hard-drawn breath.