If who I am thou carest so much to know, That thou on that account hast crossed the bank, Know that I vested was with the great mantle; And truly was I son of the She-bear, So eager to advance the cubs, that wealth Above, and here myself, I pocketed. Beneath my head the others are dragged down Who have preceded me in simony, Flattened along the fissure of the rock. Below there I shall likewise fall, whenever That one shall come who I belived thou wast, What time the sudden question I proposed. But longer I my feet already toast, And here have been in this way upside down, From tow'rds the west a Pastor without law, In Maccabees; and as his king was pliant, I do not know if I were here too bold, That him I answered only in this metre: "I pray thee tell me now how great a treasure Our Lord demanded of Saint Peter first, Before he put the keys into his keeping? Truly he nothing asked but 'Follow me.' Nor Peter nor the rest asked of Matthias Silver or gold, when he by lot was chosen And keep safe guard o'er the ill-gotten money, And were it not that still forbids it me The reverence for the keys superlative When she who sitteth upon many waters And power and strength from the ten horns received, g 95 100 ན Ye have made yourselves a god of gold and silver; Save that he one, and ye a hundred worship? Not thy conversion, but that marriage dowe: Either that anger or that conscience stung him, Unto the sound of the true words expressed. And when he had me all upon his breast, But bore me to the summit of the arch There tenderly he laid his burden down, Tenderly on the crag uneven and steep, That would have been hard passage for the goats: Thence was unveiled to me another valley. CANTO XX. Or a new pain behoves me to make verses I was already thoroughly disposed To peer down into the uncovered depth, Some one has been thus wholly turned awry; As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said Who is a greater reprobate than he Who feels compassion at the doom divine? Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom Opened the earth before the Thebans' eyes; And downward ceased he not to fall amain Because he wished to see too far before him When from a male a female he became, Who in the hills of Luni, there where grubs Among the marbles white a cavern had For his abode; whence to behold the stars Which thou beholdest not, with loosened tresses, Was Manto, who made quest through many lands, After her father had from life departed, And the city of Bacchus had become enslaved, Above in beauteous Italy lies a lake At the Alp's foot that shuts in Germany By a thousand springs, I think, and more, is bathed, Might give his blessing, if he passed that way, To front the Brescians and the Bergamasks, Where round about the bank descendeth lowest. There of necessity must fall whatever In bosom of Benaco cannot stay, Soon as the water doth begin to run, And grows a river down through verdant pastures. 75 No more Benaco is it called, but Mincio, In which it spreads itself, and makes it marshy, Not far it runs before it finds a plain Passing that way the virgin pitiless Land in the middle of the fen descried, There to escape all human intercourse, She with her servants stayed, her arts to practise, And, after her who first the place selected, From Pinamonte had received deceit. No falsehood may the verity defraud.” To me so certain, and so take my faith, But tell me of the people who are passing, If any one note-worthy thou beholdest, Thrusts out his beard upon his swarthy shoulders So that there scarce remained one in the cradle, Eryphylus his name was, and so sings My lofty Tragedy in some part or other; That knowest thou weli, who knowes the whole of it. The next, who is so slender in the flanks, Was Michael Scott, who of a verity Behold Guido Bonatti, behold Asdente, Who now unto his leather and his thread Behold the wretched ones, who left the needle, The spool and rock, and made them fortune-tellers ; But come now, for already holds the confines Of both the hemispheres, and under Seville Thou shouldst remember well it did not harm thee CANTO XXI. FROM bridge to bridge thus, speaking other things We came along, and held the summit, when We halted to behold another fissure Of Malebolge and other vain laments; And I beheld it marvellously dark. As in the Arsenal of the Venetians Boils in the winter the tenacious pitch For sail they cannot; and instead thereof One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks One hammers at the prow, one at the stern, This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists, Thus, not by fire, but by the art divine, Was boiling down below there a dense pitch * 15 |