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That iron for no craft there hotter needs.
Their lids all hung suspended; and beneath,
From them forth issued lamentable moans,
Such as the sad and tortured well might raise.

I thus: "Master! say who are these, interred
Within these vaults, of whom distinct we hear
The dolorous sighs." He answer thus returned:
"The arch-heretics are here, accompanied
By every sect their followers; and much more,
Than thou believest, the tombs are freighted: like

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Dante, having obtained permission from his guide, holds discourse with Farinata degli Uberti and Cavalcanti, who lie in their fiery tombs that are yet open, and not to be closed up till after the last judgment. Farinata predicts the Poet's exile from Florence; and shows him that the condemned have knowledge of future things, but are ignorant of what is at present passing, unless it be revealed by some new-comer from earth.

Now by a secret pathway we proceed,
Between the walls, that hem the region round,
And the tormented souls: my master first,
I close behind his steps. "Virtue supreme!"
I thus began: "Who through these ample orbs

In circuit lead'st me, even as thou will'st;
Speak thou, and satisfy my wish. May those,
Who lie within these sepulchres, be seen?
Already all the lids are raised, and none

O'er them keeps watch." He thus in answer spake :
"They shall be closed all, what-time they here
From Josaphat returned shall come, and bring
Their bodies, which above they now have left.
The cemetery on this part obtain,
With Epicurus, all his followers,

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into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land." Joel iii. 2.

Who with the body make the spirit die.
Here therefore satisfaction shall be soon,
Both to the question asked, and to the wish
Which thou conceal'st in silence." I replied:
"I keep not, guide beloved! from thee my heart
Secreted, but to shun vain length of words;
A lesson erewhile taught me by thyself."

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"O Tuscan! thou, who through the city of fire
Alive art passing, so discreet of speech:
Here, please thee, stay awhile. Thy utterance
Declares the place of thy nativity

To be that noble land, with which perchance
I too severely dealt." Sudden that sound

Forth issued from a vault, whereat, in fear,

I somewhat closer to my leader's side

Approaching, he thus spake: "What dost thou? Turn:
Lo! Farinata there, who hath himself

Uplifted from his girdle upwards, all

Exposed, behold him." On his face was mine

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Already fixed: his breast and forehead there

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My guide thrust me, with fearless hands and prompt;

This warning added: "See thy words be clear.”

He, soon as there I stood at the tomb's foot,

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Eyed me a space; then in disdainful mood

Addressed me: 66 Say what ancestors were thine."

I, willing to obey him, straight revealed

The whole, nor kept back aught: whence he, his brow
Somewhat uplifting, cried: "Fiercely were they
Adverse to me, my party, and the blood

From whence I sprang: twice, therefore, I abroad
Scattered them." 66
Though driven out, yet they each time
From all parts," answered I, "returned; an art
Which yours have shown they are not skilled to learn."
Then, peering forth from the unclosed jaw,
Rose from his side a shade, high as the chin,

16. Who deny the immortality of the soul.

19. Dante, in Canto vi. 79, had asked about Farinata, and Ciacco had said that he would find him below. Virgil now divines the Poet's unexpressed desire to see and talk with the great Florentine warrior.

22. Cf. Hell, iii. 71–76.

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ance of Manfred, king of the Two Sicilies. He alone saved Florence, when his own party proposed to raze it to the ground.

47. First in 1248, and secondly in 1260, after the battle of Montaperti.

49. Dante retorts that his ancestors returned on each of these occasions (the first time in 1251,

25. The spirit noticed from Dante's accent after the defeat of the Ghibellines at Figline, and that he was a native of Florence.

32. Farinata degli Uberti was a leader of the Ghibelline faction at Florence in the thirteenth century. Having been exiled from Florence, he recovered the city in 1260, with the assist

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again in 1266, after the death of Manfred). He adds, not very courteously, that Farinata's party had not learned the art of returning.

52. The spirit of Cavalcante Cavalcanti, father of Dante's friend, Guido.

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Leaning, methought, upon its knees upraised.
It looked around, as eager to explore

If there were other with me; but perceiving
That fond imagination quenched, with tears

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Thus spake: "If thou through this blind prison go'st,
Led by thy lofty genius and profound,

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Where is my son? and wherefore not with thee?"
I straight replied: "Not of myself I come;
By him, who there expects me, through this clime
Conducted, whom perchance Guido thy son
Had in contempt." Already had his words
And mode of punishment read me his name,
Whence I so fully answered. He at once

Exclaimed, up starting, "How! said'st thou, he had?
No longer lives he? Strikes not on his eye

The blessed daylight?" Then, of some delay
I made ere my reply, aware, down fell

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Supine, nor after forth appeared he more.

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Meanwhile the other, great of soul, near whom

I yet was stationed, changed not countenance stern,

Nor moved the neck, nor bent his ribbed side.
"And if," continuing the first discourse,

"They in this art," he cried, "small skill have shown;

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That doth torment me more e'en than this bed.

But not yet fifty times shall be relumed
Her aspect, who reigns here queen of this realm,
Ere thou shalt know the full weight of that art.
So to the pleasant world mayst thou return,
As thou shalt tell me why, in all their laws,
Against my kin this people is so fell."

"The slaughter and great havoc," I replied,
"That colored Arbia's flood with crimson stain-
To these impute, that in our hallowed dome

59. Guido, the son of Cavalcante Cavalcanti; "he whom I call the first of my friends," says Dante in his Vita Nuova, where the commencement of their friendship is related. From the character given of him by contemporary writers, his temper was well formed to assimilate with that of our Poet. "He was," according to G. Villani, viii. 41, 66 of a philosophical and elegant mind, if he had not been too delicate and fastidious." And Dino Compagni terms him " a young and noble knight, brave and courteous, but of a lofty scornful spirit, much addicted to solitude and study." He died, either in exile at Serrazana, or soon after his return to Florence, December, 1300, during the spring of which year the action of this poem is supposed to be passing.

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75. I.e. the art of returning to Florence.

77. Not fifty months shall be passed, before thou shalt learn by woeful experience the difficulty of returning from banishment to thy native city."

78. Proserpina, or the moon.

Farinata is speaking in March, 1300; Dante was banished January, 1302. Hence the reference is not to the Poet's exile, but to his vain efforts to get back to Florence.

85. By means of Farinata degli Uberti the Guelphs were conquered by the army of King Manfred, near the river Arbia, with so great a

Such orisons ascend." Sighing he shook
The head, then thus resumed: "In that affray
I stood not singly, nor, without just cause,
Assuredly, should with the rest have stirred;
But singly there I stood, when, by consent
Of all, Florence had to the ground been razed,
The one who openly forbade the deed."

"So may thy lineage find at last repose,"
I thus adjured him, "as thou solve this knot,
Which now involves my mind. If right I hear,
Ye seem to view beforehand that which time
Leads with him, of the present uninformed."
"We view, as one who hath an evil sight,"
He answered, "plainly, objects far remote;
So much of his large splendor yet imparts
The Almighty Ruler: but when they approach,
Or actually exist, our intellect

Then wholly fails; nor of your human state,
Except what others bring us, know we aught.
Hence therefore mayst thou understand, that all
Our knowledge in that instant shall expire,
When on futurity the portals close."

Then conscious of my fault, and by remorse
Smitten, I added thus: "Now shalt thou say
To him there fallen, that his offspring still
Is to the living joined; and bid him know,
That if from answer, silent, I abstained,
'T was that my thought was occupied, intent
Upon that error, which thy help hath solved."

But now my master summoning me back
I heard, and with more eager haste besought
The spirit to inform me, who with him
Partook his lot. He answer thus returned:

slaughter that those who escaped from that defeat took refuge, not in Florence, which city they considered as lost to them, but in Lucca.

86. This appears to allude to certain prayers which were offered up in the churches of Florence, for deliverance from the hostile attempts of the Uberti; or, it may be, that the public councils being held in churches, the speeches delivered in them against the Uberti are termed "orisons," or prayers.

90. Guido Novello assembled a council of the Ghibellines at Empoli; where it was agreed by all, that, in order to maintain the ascendency of the Ghibelline party in Tuscany, it was necessary to destroy Florence, which could serve only (the people of that city being Guelphs) to enable the party attached to the church to recover its strength. This cruel sentence, passed

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upon so noble a city, met with no opposition from any of its citizens or friends, except Farinata degli Uberti, who openly and without reserve forbade the measure; affirming, that he had endured so many hardships, and encountered so many dangers, with no other view than that of being able to pass his days in his own country.

96. Ciacco and Farinata had predicted the future to Dante; yet Cavalcanti did not seem to know whether his son were alive or not. The Poet cannot understand this apparent contradiction.

107. At the Last Judgment.

108. Dante felt remorse for not having returned an immediate answer to the inquiry of Cavalcante, from which delay he was led to believe that his son Guido was no longer living.

"More than a thousand with me here are laid.
Within is Frederick, second of that name,
And the Lord Cardinal; and of the rest

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I speak not." He, this said, from sight withdrew.
But I my steps toward the ancient bard
Reverting, ruminated on the words

Betokening me such ill. Onward he moved,

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And thus, in going, questioned: "Whence the amaze
That holds thy senses wrapt?" I satisfied
The inquiry, and the sage enjoined me straight:
"Let thy safe memory store what thou hast heard
To thee importing harm; and note thou this,"
With his raised finger bidding me take heed,
"When thou shalt stand before her gracious beam,
Whose bright eye all surveys, she of thy life
The future tenor will to thee unfold."

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Forthwith he to the left hand turned his feet:
We left the wall, and towards the middle space
Went by a path that to a valley strikes,

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Which e'en thus high exhaled its noisome steam.

CANTO XI.

ARGUMENT.

Dante arrives at the verge of a rocky precipice which encloses the seventh circle, where he sees the sepulchre of Anastasius the Heretic; behind the lid of which pausing a little, to make himself capable by degrees of enduring the fetid smell that steamed upward from the abyss, he is instructed by Virgil concerning the manner in which the three following circles are disposed, and what description of sinners is punished in each. He then inquires the reason why the carnal, the gluttonous, the avaricious and prodigal, the wrathful and gloomy, suffer not their punishments within the city of Dis. He next asks how the crime of usury is an offence against God; and at length the two Poets go towards the place from whence a passage leads down to the seventh circle.

UPON the utmost verge of a high bank,

By craggy rocks environed round, we came,

Where woes beneath, more cruel yet, were stowed:
And here, to shun the horrible excess
Of fetid exhalation upward cast

120. The Emperor Frederick II., who died in

1250.

121. Ottaviano Ubaldini, a Florentine, made cardinal in 1245, and deceased about 1273. On account of his great influence, he was generally known by the appellation of "the Cardinal." It is reported of him, that he declared, if there

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were any such thing as a human soul, he had lost his for the Ghibellines.

125. The "ill" is the prophecy of exile made by Farinata, in lines 77 ff.

132. Virgil is symbol of Human Wisdom, and his knowledge is limited; Beatrice sees all things in God, and can explain Dante's exile fully.

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