cried out: 'Surely you'll remember Mosca also,
who said, alas: "A done deed finds its purpose."
For Tuscany, that was an evil seed.'

'all trembling, kissed me on my mouth.
A Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it.
That day we read in it no further.'

forced his lips to draw apart
as a person parched with hectic fever curls
one lip to his chin and twists the other up.

meeting the morning breeze
with songs of joy among the leaves,
which rustled such accompaniment to their rhymes

'Among filthy hogs, more fit to feed on acorns
than on any food that is prepared for men,
the water first directs its feeble course.

'Step forward, Alichino, Calcabrina,'
he continued, 'and you Cagnazzo,
and let Barbariccia lead the squad.

'The good that satisfies this court
is alpha and omega of whatever scripture
Love teaches me in loud or gentle tones.'

'Do not marvel, Tuscan, if I weep
when, along with Guido da Prata, I recall
Ugolin d'Azzo, who lived among us,

And he continued: 'Now tell me, would it be worse
for man on earth if he were not a social being?'
'Yes,' I agreed, 'and here I ask no proof.'

Around that point I saw more than a thousand angels,
their wings outspread, in joyful festival,
each distinct in brightness and in motion.

so that the bank, which hid him like an apron
from his middle downwards, still showed
so much of him above that quite in vain

'so that my will would be content
if I could know what fate draws near,
for the arrow one expects comes slower.

As in the arsenal of the Venetians
in wintertime they boil the viscous pitch
to caulk their unsound ships

'Wretched Cleopatra still weeps because of it.
She, fleeing before its advancing front,
took from the asp her quick and baleful death.

Off they set along the left-hand bank,
but first each pressed his tongue between his teeth
to blow a signal to their leader,
and he had made a trumpet of his asshole.

'In that town was born the amorous lover
of the Christian faith, the holy athlete,
gentle to his own and savage to his foes.

I have seen the cavalry break camp,
prepare for an attack, make their muster
and at times fall back to save themselves.

And, like a baby reaching out its arms
to mamma after it has drunk her milk,
its inner impulse kindled into outward flame,

'Therefore, go on. I shall follow at your hem
and later will rejoin my band,
who go lamenting their eternal pain.'

'that Mary gave me when invoked with cries
of childbirth, and in your ancient Baptistry,
I was at once Cacciaguida and a Christian.

As sometimes barges lie ashore,
partly in water, partly on the land,
and as among the guzzling Germans

'hypocrisy, flatteries, and sorcerers;
lies, theft, and simony;
panders, barrators, and all such filth.

the beaver sets itself to catch its prey,
so lay this worst of brutes upon the stony rim
that makes a boundary for the sandy soil.

and when a traveler, starting out,
is pierced with love if far away he hears
a bell that seems to mourn the dying light,

The heavy dropsy, which afflicts the body
with its ill-digesting humor
so that the face and belly do not match,

'O belovèd of the first Lover,' I said then,
'divine creature whose speech so floods and scalds me
that I am more and more alive,

than I, to make still better mirrors of my eyes,
inclined my head down toward the water
that flows there for our betterment,

'and after, rising through the heavens, light to light,
I have learned things that, should I retell them,
would discomfort many with their bitter taste.

I saw the pitch but still saw nothing in it
except the bubbles raised up by the boiling,
the whole mass swelling and then settling back.

A little farther on the centaur stopped
above a crowd whose heads, down to their necks,
seemed to issue from that boiling stream.

'all trembling, kissed me on my mouth.
A Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it.
That day we read in it no further.'

'In the great city, by the fair river Arno,'
I said to them, 'I was born and raised,
and I am here in the body that was always mine.

'No bracelet, no tiara did she wear,
no embroidered gown, no waistband
more striking to the eye than was its wearer.

'You shall learn how salt is the taste
of another man's bread and how hard is the way,
going down and then up another man's stairs.

and their nails tore off those scabs
as a knife strips scales from bream
or other fish with even larger scales.

Now my words will come far short
of what I still remember, like a babe's
who at his mother's breast still wets his tongue.

'"Consider how your souls were sown:
you were not made to live like brutes or beasts,
but to pursue virtue and knowledge."

Then, farther on, my wandering gaze
made out another crest, blood-red,
marked by a goose more white than butter.

As yet we tarried by the seashore, like those
who think about the way and in their hearts go on--
while still their bodies linger.

each spark keeping to its flaming ring. They were
so many that their number ran to thousands more
than the successive doubling of a chessboard's squares.

'Your way of speaking makes it clear
that you are native to that noble city
to which I was perhaps too cruel.'

'But since the time runs short that readies you for sleep,
let us stop here, as a good tailor would,
who cuts the cloak as he is stocked with cloth.

'Perhaps my words, obscure as those of Themis
or the Sphinx, persuade you less
because, like theirs, they cloud your mind.

'and this one, so conjoined, begins to function,
first coagulating, then quickening that which,
as its future matter, it has already thickened.

Thus Beatrice. And those joyful spirits
transformed themselves to rings around fixed poles,
circling, like blazing comets, in their brightness.

from the core of one of these new lights,
as the north star makes a compass needle veer,
rose a voice that made me turn to where it came from.

'The soul of every beast and every plant
is drawn from a complex of potentials
by the shining and the motion of the holy lights.

Like sudden lightning that confounds
the faculty of sight, depriving eyes
of taking in the clearest objects,

'From that height light descends to the lowest elements,
passing down from act to act, becoming such
that it produces nothing more than brief contingencies.

'But now extend your hand and open
my eyes for me.' I did not open them.
And to be rude to him was courtesy.

And my leader said to me: 'You there, cowering
among the broken boulders of the bridge,
now you may come back to me in safety.'

as I saw there. For had Tambernic fallen on it,
or Pietrapana, the ice would not
have creaked, not even at the edge.

It is no enterprise undertaken lightly --
to describe the very bottom of the universe --
nor for a tongue that still cries 'mommy' and 'daddy.'

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

Day was departing and the darkened air
released the creatures of the earth
from their labor, and I, alone,

as they, unequally distressed,
plodded their weary round on that first ledge,
purging away the darkness of the world.

While the one spirit said this
the other wept, so that for pity
I swooned as if in death.
And down I fell as a dead body falls.

'While I was still in Virgil's company,
both on the mountain that restores our souls
and during our descent into the region of the dead,

'nor was she of Rhodope, who was deceived
by Demophoön, nor Alcides,
when he embraced Iole in his heart.

What makes your mind rear up so high?
You are, as it were, defective creatures,
like the unformed worm, shaped from the mud.

I saw Latona's daughter shining bright,
without that shadow for which I once believed
she was both dense and rare.

I understood that to such torment
the carnal sinners are condemned,
they who make reason subject to desire.

When the game of dice breaks up,
the loser, left dejected,
rehearses every throw and sadly learns,

'Here shall we drag it, and in this dismal wood
our bodies will be hung, each one
upon the thorn-bush of its painful shade.'

Then the fear that had endured
in the lake of my heart, all the night
I spent in such distress, was calmed.

To our right I saw a suffering new to me,
new torments, and new scourgers,
with whom the first ditch was replete.

Then it seemed to me the earth was cleft
between the wheels, and I saw a dragon issue,
thrust its tail up through the car,

The heavy dropsy, which afflicts the body
with its ill-digesting humor
so that the face and belly do not match,

There I saw assembled the fair school
of the lord of loftiest song,
soaring like an eagle far above the rest.

'He lies, for the light chose to hide itself.
And therefore Spaniards and Indians,
as well as Jews, could all see that eclipse take place.

'No bracelet, no tiara did she wear,
no embroidered gown, no waistband
more striking to the eye than was its wearer.

They said: 'Do not withhold your gaze.
We have placed you here before the emeralds
from which, some time ago, Love shot his darts.'

'shall sit the soul of noble Henry,
who on earth, as emperor, shall attempt
to set things straight for Italy before she is prepared.

We were passing over shades sprawled
under heavy rain, setting our feet
upon their emptiness, which seems real bodies.

Between the legs the entrails dangled. I saw
the innards and the loathsome sack
that turns what one has swallowed into shit.

'It is the eternal light of Siger,
who, instructing in the Street of Straw,
demonstrated enviable truths.'

Charon the demon, with eyes of glowing coals,
beckons to them, herds them all aboard,
striking anyone who slackens with his oar.

It was now the hour that melts a sailor's heart
and saddens him with longing on the day
he's said farewell to his belovèd friends,

'or else, just as fat and lean
alternate in mass upon a body, this planet
would alternate the pages of its volume.

'Thus did the fathers of those who now,
whenever your church needs to fill the bishop's seat,
fatten themselves by sitting long in council.

Then more than ever I was afraid of dying:
my fear alone would have sufficed to bring it on,
had I not noted how tightly he was bound.

Ah, how hard it is to tell
the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh --
the very thought of it renews my fear!

The one transfixed just stared, said nothing.
Indeed, with his feet stock-still, he yawned,
as if deep sleep or fever had assailed him.

As, lit by the sun's rays streaming through broken clouds,
my eyes, sheltered by the shade,
once saw a field of flowers,

Then, making the figs with both his thumbs,
the thief raised up his fists and cried:
'Take that, God! It's aimed at you!'

'has made my tomb a sewer of blood and filth,
so that the Evil One, who fell from here above,
takes satisfaction there below.'

Great fire leaps from the smallest spark.
Perhaps, in my wake, prayer will be shaped
with better words that Cyrrha may respond.

'The walls that were constructed for an abbey
have been converted into dens for thieves, and sacks,
now filled with rotten flour, once served as cowls.

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

'His head is fashioned of fine gold,
his breast and arms of purest silver,
then to the fork he's made of brass,

'grave words were said to me about my future life --
however much I feel myself prepared
foursquare against the blows of chance --

'the sorrow of it made me gnaw my hands.
And they, imagining I was doing this
from hunger, rose at once, saying:

'who robs himself of the world above
or gambles away and wastes his substance,
lamenting when he should rejoice.

The fair creature, garbed in white,
came toward us. In his face there was what seemed
the shimmering of the morning star.

'I love the leaves with which the garden
of the eternal Gardener is in leaf
in measure of the good He has bestowed on them.'

first set in motion those fair things,
so that, despite that beast with gaudy fur,
I still could hope for good, encouraged

As sometimes barges lie ashore,
partly in water, partly on the land,
and as among the guzzling Germans

Such were Virgil's words to me,
and never was there promise of a gift
that might yield equal pleasure.

in my vision there arose a girl.
She was weeping bitterly, crying: 'O Queen,
why, in your anger, have you chosen not to be?

'So that you may be all the more inclined
to scrape these tear-drops glazed upon my face,
know that the moment when a soul betrays

O you misgotten rabble, worse than all the rest,
who fill that place so hard to speak of,
better had you here been sheep or goats!

'"Let them have hope in you," he declares
in his god-song, "those who know your name."
Among those who share my faith, who does not know it?

'since, joined, the one fears not the other.
If you don't believe me, think of a grain of wheat,
for by its seed each plant is known.

'so that the light, granted to us freely
by the Highest Good, shall increase,
the light that makes us fit to see Him.

As gravestones set above the buried dead
bear witness to what once they were,
their carven images recalling them to mind,

But the other, that great soul at whose wish
I had stopped, did not change countenance,
nor bend his neck, nor move his chest.

One I saw, fashioned like a lute --
had he been sundered at the groin
from the joining where a man goes forked.

On we went, escorted by ten demons.
What savage company! But, as they say,
'in church with saints, with guzzlers in the tavern.'

As near, perhaps, as a halo seems to be
when it encircles the light that colors it,
where the vapor that forms it is most dense,

And he to me: 'After long feuding
they shall come to blood. The rustic faction,
having done great harm, shall drive the others out.

And I answered: 'Poet, I entreat you
by the God you did not know,
so that I may escape this harm and worse,

We had left him behind when I took note
of two souls so frozen in a single hole
the head of one served as the other's hat.

But the other was indeed a full-fledged hawk,
fierce with his talons, and the pair of them
went tumbling down into the scalding pond.

Then: 'He from whom your house derives its name
and who for a hundred years and more
has circled the mountain on its lowest bank

'my body's bones would still be sheltered
at the head of the bridge near Benevento
under the cairn of heavy stones.

'that you be kind enough to seek in Fano
heartfelt prayers for me
to help me purge my grievous sins.

Ah, how they made them pick their heels up
at the first stroke! You may be certain
no one waited for a second or a third.

'High in fair Italy, at the foot of the alps
that form a border with Germany near Tyrol,
lies a lake they call Benàco.

'Such prophecy is not unknown to me.
Let Fortune spin her wheel just as she pleases,
and let the loutish peasant ply his hoe.'

'Among filthy hogs, more fit to feed on acorns
than on any food that is prepared for men,
the water first directs its feeble course.

BEFORE ME NOTHING WAS BUT THINGS ETERNAL,
AND ETERNAL I ENDURE.
ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE.

'as did Ausonia's horn, from where it borders Bari,
Gaeta, and Catona, to the place
where the Tronto and the Verde flow into the sea.

If the contagion of every hospital
in Valdichiana, from July until September,
and in the Maremma and Sardegna, were amassed

Dawn was overtaking the darkness of the hour,
which fled before it, and I saw and knew
the distant trembling of the sea.

'All these people who weep while they are singing
followed their appetites beyond all measure,
and here regain, in thirst and hunger, holiness.

and then to me: 'O Tuscan, who have come
to this assembly of sad hypocrites,
do not disdain to tell us who you are.'

His answer was: 'More than a thousand lie
here with me: both the second Frederick
and the Cardinal. Of the rest I do not speak.'

'Each strives to gain attention by inventing new ideas,
expounded by the preachers at some length --
but the Gospel remains silent.

'Oh,' I said to him, 'are you not Oderisi,
the honor of Gubbio and of that art
which they in Paris call illumination?'

And if the powers of our imagination
are too earthbound for such height, it is no wonder,
for eye has never seen light brighter than the sun.

Between the legs the entrails dangled. I saw
the innards and the loathsome sack
that turns what one has swallowed into shit.

'Here the root of humankind was innocent,
here it is always spring, with every fruit in season.
This is the nectar of which the ancients tell.'

There is a place in Hell called Malebolge,
fashioned entirely of iron-colored rock,
as is the escarpment that encircles it.

'I'm sending some men of mine along that way
to see if anyone is out to take the air.
Go with them -- they won't hurt you.'

I still stood bending down to hear,
when my leader nudged my side and said:
'It's up to you to speak -- this one is Italian.'

Ah, Italy enslaved, abode of misery,
pilotless ship in a fierce tempest tossed,
no mistress over provinces but a harlot!

'my limbs have not been left on earth,
whether green or dried, but are here with me
intact, in all their blood and joints.

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

O good Apollo, for this last labor
make me a vessel worthy
of the gift of your belovèd laurel.

'Lady, you are so great and so prevail above,
should he who longs for grace not turn to you,
his longing would be doomed to wingless flight.

As the green lizard beneath the scorching lash
of dog-day heat, between one hedge and the next,
seems lightning as it streaks across the road,

It struck the chariot with its full force
so that it reeled like a ship tossed in a tempest,
now leeward, now windward, driven by the waves.

But now, near the beginning of the steep,
a leopard light and swift
and covered with a spotted pelt

'As Constantine once had Sylvester summoned
from Soracte to cure his leprous sores,
so this man called on me to be his doctor

'May it please you to welcome his arrival,
since he's in search of liberty, which is so dear,
as he well knows who gives his life for it.

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

The eternal pearl received us in itself,
as water does a ray of light
and yet remains unsundered and serene.

It is no enterprise undertaken lightly --
to describe the very bottom of the universe --
nor for a tongue that still cries 'mommy' and 'daddy.'

My eyes beheld the one, created nobler
than any other creature, fall like lightning
from the sky, over to one side.

The little patch of earth that makes us here so fierce,
from hills to rivermouths, I saw it all
while I was being wheeled with the eternal Twins.

Along the sides and bottom I could see
the livid stone was pierced with holes,
all round and of a single size.

It was now the hour that melts a sailor's heart
and saddens him with longing on the day
he's said farewell to his belovèd friends,

'The world does not permit report of them.
Mercy and justice hold them in contempt.
Let us not speak of them -- look and pass by.'

'Love, which absolves no one beloved from loving,
seized me so strongly with his charm that,
as you see, it has not left me yet.

'Between Sestri and Chiàvari there runs down
a lovely stream and with its name
the title of my line has marked its shield.

'He shall not feed on lands or lucre
but on wisdom, love, and power.
Between felt and felt shall be his birth.

I turned to my left with the confidence
a child has running to his mamma
when he is afraid or in distress

And she: 'O everlasting light of that great man
with whom our Lord did leave the keys,
which He brought down from this astounding joy,

'Oh, look at that one there, gnashing his teeth! --
I would say more, but I'm afraid that demon's
getting set to give my mange a scratching.'

In just the same way cooks command their scullions
to take their skewers and prod the meat down
in the cauldron, lest it float back up.

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

'"Now we are sullen in black mire."
This hymn they gurgle in their gullets,
for they cannot get a word out whole.'

'One day, to pass the time in pleasure,
we read of Lancelot, how love enthralled him.
We were alone, without the least misgiving.

at the hour when the fly gives way to the mosquito --
sees fireflies that glimmer in the valley
where perhaps he harvests grapes and ploughs his fields,

exactly thus did Beatrice drive away each mote
from my eyes with the radiance of her own,
which could be seen a thousand miles away,

The water was darker than the deepest purple.
Accompanied by its murky waves
we began our strange descent.

lifelong it feeds on neither grain nor grasses,
but thrives on drops of frankincense and cardamom,
while nard and myrrh make up its winding sheet --

'You who are still alive assign each cause
only to the heavens, as though they drew
all things along upon their necessary paths.

'The new crowd with their sudden profits
have begot in you, Florence, such excess
and arrogance that you already weep.'

In that torch of Jupiter I watched
the sparkling of the love resplendent there
make signs, before my eyes, of our speech.

And the burning of the sacrifice
had not yet finished in my breast before I knew
my offering was propitious and accepted,

Never did water, as it nears the paddles,
rush down along the sluices
cut through earth to turn a millwheel

It was not the great hall of a palace,
where we were, but a natural dungeon,
rough underfoot and wanting light.

Perhaps some time by stroke of palsy
a person could be twisted in that way,
but I've not seen it nor do I think it likely.

Two I saw seated, propped against each other
as pans are propped to warm before the fire,
each of them blotched with scabs from head to foot.

'Will greater fame be yours if you put off
your flesh when it is old than had you died
with pappo and dindi still upon your lips

As twin rainbows, parallel in shape and color,
arc in their pathway through translucent clouds
when Juno gives the order to her handmaid --

Then he, beating on his pate:
'I am immersed down here for the flattery
with which my tongue was never cloyed.'

And one of them, who took offense, perhaps
at being named so vilely, hit him
with a fist right on his rigid paunch.

As goats that have been quick and reckless
on the heights before they grazed
now peacefully chew their cud,

The eternal pearl received us in itself,
as water does a ray of light
and yet remains unsundered and serene.

just so appeared -- darting toward the bellies
of the other two -- a little fiery reptile,
black and livid as a peppercorn.

'From real forms your perception draws
an image it unfolds within you
so that the mind considers it,

Then, with a hundred hooks and more,
they ripped him, crying: 'Here you must do your dance
in secret and pilfer -- can you? -- in the dark.'

His face appeared to me as long and broad
as is, in Rome, the pine cone at St. Peter's,
his other parts as large in like degree,

And now, along with the pre-dawn splendors
that, rising, become more welcome to the traveler,
as, returning, he lodges a little nearer home,

Four other ladies, dressed in purple,
were dancing at the left, keeping to the cadence
the three-eyed one among them set.

As a man in a shivering-fit of quartan fever,
so ill his nails have lost all color,
trembles all over at the sight of shade,

Thus I saw the seventh rabble change
and change again, and let the newness of it
be my excuse if my pen has gone astray.

'With him it raced to the shore of the Red Sea.
With him it brought the world such peace
that the doors of Janus's shrine were locked.

'From this you may, in consequence, deduce
your resurrection, if you but recall
how then your flesh was made

'But noting how our merit equals our reward
is part of our happiness,
because we see them being neither less nor more.

Nor did this jewel leave its ribbon,
but ran along the shining band so that
it seemed a flame that glows in alabaster.

so ridges stretched from the escarpment
down across the banks and ditches
into the pit at which they end and join.

Now on our right I heard the torrent's hideous roar
below us, so that I thrust my head forward
and dared to look down the abyss.

From that torrent issued living sparks
and, on either bank, they settled on the flowers,
like rubies ringed in gold.

Between the legs the entrails dangled. I saw
the innards and the loathsome sack
that turns what one has swallowed into shit.

And so, in representing Paradise,
the sacred poem must make its leap across,
as does a man who finds his path cut off.

Thus praying for safe haven for themselves and us,
those shades trudged on beneath their burden,
the kind that sometimes weighs us down in dreams,

We had gone a little farther on,
when I heard voices crying: 'Mary, pray for us,'
then 'Michael,' 'Peter,' and 'All saints.'

'You shall learn how salt is the taste
of another man's bread and how hard is the way,
going down and then up another man's stairs.

Sweet color of oriental sapphire,
hovering in the calm and peaceful aspect
of intervening air, pure to the horizon,

Two I saw seated, propped against each other
as pans are propped to warm before the fire,
each of them blotched with scabs from head to foot.

'Ah,' he begged, 'pay no attention
to the withered scab discoloring my skin
nor to this lack of flesh on me,

Already I had fixed my gaze on his.
And he was rising, lifting chest and brow
as though he held all Hell in utter scorn.

'Nonetheless, forswear all falsehood,
revealing all that you have seen,
and then let him who itches scratch.

Then I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck
and said: 'Either you name yourself
or I'll leave you without a single hair.'

At my other side were the shades in prayer
who, through those dreadful seams,
were wringing tears that bathed their cheeks.

'But that the adversary of all evil showed
such favor to him, considering who and what he was,
and the high sequel that would spring from him,

I raised one hand above my brow
and gave my eyes sufficient shade
to temper this excess of light.

'As Hippolytus was forced to flee from Athens,
because of his stepmother, treacherous and fierce,
so shall you be forced to flee from Florence.

'But it was destined that, to the shattered stone
that guards the bridge, Florence should offer
a sacrificial victim in her final days of peace.

And then a she-wolf who, all hide and bones,
seemed charged with all the appetites
that have made many live in wretchedness

'was affirmed with a second crown
by the eternal Breath, through Honorius,
in his holy purpose as shepherd of this flock.

snatches up her child and flees,
and, more concerned for him than for herself,
does not delay to put a shift on.

Searching the bottom with my eyes I saw
a man, his head so smeared with shit
one could not tell if he were priest or layman.

and just as one who faints, and knows not why --
whether possessed by devils that pull him down
or seized by the sickness that causes men to fall --

'O my dear lord,' I said, 'just look at him.
He shows himself more indolent
than if sloth had been his very sister.'

'But the face of the lady reigning here
will be rekindled not fifty times before you too
shall know how difficult a skill that is to learn.

After I rested my wearied flesh a while,
I took my way again along the desert slope,
my firm foot always lower than the other.

If I was stripped of my earlier confusion
by her brief and smiling words,
I was the more entangled in new doubt

'O living creature, gracious and kind,
that come through somber air to visit us
who stained the world with blood,

Thus he to me: 'You will come soon enough
to where your eyes will give an answer,
seeing the source that puts out such a blast.'

And I: 'Master, I would be most eager
to see him pushed deep down into this soup
before we leave the lake.'

It spreads itself into so vast a circle
that its circumference would be larger
than the sphere that is the sun.

As a famished man will bite into his bread,
the one above had set his teeth into the other
just where the brain's stem leaves the spinal cord.

All cried: 'Get Filippo Argenti!'
And that spiteful Florentine spirit
gnawed at himself with his own teeth.

And I saw light that flowed as flows a river,
pouring its golden splendor between two banks
painted with the wondrous colors of spring.

We were passing over shades sprawled
under heavy rain, setting our feet
upon their emptiness, which seems real bodies.

And not all our ancient mother lost
could save my cheeks, washed in the dew,
from being stained again with tears.

there came to me a woman, in a dream,
stammering, cross-eyed, splayfooted,
with crippled hands and sickly pale complexion.

we climbed up, he first and I behind him,
far enough to see, through a round opening,
a few of those fair things the heavens bear.
Then we came forth, to see again the stars.

The banks, made slimy by a sticky vapor
from below, were coated with a mould
offending eyes and nose.

'You are my teacher and my author.
You are the one from whom alone I took
the noble style that has brought me honor.

'So close they nearly share sunset and dawn
lie Bougie and the city that I came from.
Once it made its harbor warm with its own blood.

'You are my teacher and my author.
You are the one from whom alone I took
the noble style that has brought me honor.

'Love, quick to kindle in the gentle heart,
seized this man with the fair form taken from me.
The way of it afflicts me still.

Ah Pisa, how you shame the people
of that fair land where 'sì' is heard!
Since your neighbors are so slow to punish you,

'We have come to where I said
you would see the miserable sinners
who have lost the good of the intellect.'

As the Milky Way, arrayed with greater and lesser lights,
glows white between the universal poles,
making even sages wonder how and why,

'You are my teacher and my author.
You are the one from whom alone I took
the noble style that has brought me honor.

'For what it wrought with the one who bore it next
Brutus and Cassius bark in Hell,
and both Modena and Perugia were aggrieved.

'I was among the ones who are suspended
when a lady called me, so blessèd and so fair
that I implored her to command me.

'the red part of the zodiac would show
still closer to the Bears
unless it were to leave its ancient track.

Now I can hear the screams
of agony. Now I have come
where a great wailing beats upon me.

'Rarely does human worth rise through the branches.
And this He wills who gives it,
so that it shall be sought from Him.

Three times it circled Beatrice,
its song so filled with heavenly delight
my phantasy cannot repeat it.

when a cog pulls one wheel and drives another,
chiming its ting-ting with notes so sweet
that the willing spirit swells with love,

Not until we'd made a wide approach
did we come to a place where the boatman bellowed:
'Out with you here, this is the entrance.'

'If rage is added to their malice,
they will pursue us still more cruelly
than the hound that sets his fangs into a hare.'

'I was a lamb among the holy flock
led by Dominic along the road
where sheep are fattened if they do not stray.

'The fifth light, the most beautiful among us,
breathes forth such love that all the world below
is greedy to discover how his soul has fared.

'for what you ask is hidden in the depths
of the abyss of God's eternal law, so that the sight
of any being He created is cut off from it.

'but tell me if you have it in your purse.'
And I: 'I do indeed, so bright and round
that of its coinage I am not in doubt.'

'For that living Light, which so streams forth
from its shining Source that it neither parts from it
nor from the Love that is intrined with them,

My memory of that moment is more lost
than five and twenty centuries make dim that enterprise
when, in wonder, Neptune at the Argo's shadow stared.

But the reverence that is mistress over me
at the mere sound of Be or ice
bowed down my head, as when a man nods off.

Green as newly opened leaves, their garments,
stirred and fanned by their green wings,
swirled and billowed out behind them.

such did I become before that final flaming
until I heard these words: 'Why do you blind your eyes
trying to behold what is not here to see?

'Great already was the stripe of fur,
great were the Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifanti, Barucci,
Galli, and those who blush because of the bushel.

'as did Ausonia's horn, from where it borders Bari,
Gaeta, and Catona, to the place
where the Tronto and the Verde flow into the sea.

I saw a point that flashed a beam of light
so sharp the eye on which it burns
must close against its piercing brightness.

My lady, therefore, who saw that I was freed
from staring upward, said: 'Cast your sight below
and see how wide a circle you have traveled.'

And as birds risen from the river's edge,
seeming to celebrate their pleasure in their food,
form now a rounded arc, and now another shape,

'This much I would have You know:
as long as conscience does not chide,
I am prepared for Fortune as she wills.

That ever-living One and Two and Three
who reigns forever in Three and Two and One,
uncircumscribed and circumscribing all,

'The Good, which revolves and gladdens
all the realm you now are climbing,
puts its plan to work through these great bodies.

'this centennial year will come again five times.
Consider, then, should a man not strive to excel
so that his first life leave behind a better?

Not less astounded is the mountaineer,
struck dumb and staring all around him
when rough and rustic he comes into a town,

so each flame moves along the gullet
of the trench and -- though none reveals the theft --
each flame conceals a sinner.

'For this reason Scripture condescends
to your capacity when it attributes hands and feet
to God, but has another meaning,

But, as happens, when one food may satisfy
while still we crave another, we give thanks
for the one we have, while asking for the other,

While my soul, filled with wonder and with joy,
tasted the food that, satisfying in itself,
yet for itself creates a greater craving,

'But it was I alone, when all agreed
to make an end of Florence, I alone
who dared speak out in her defense.'

'If that is so, what sun, what candles
dispelled your darkness so that afterwards
you hoisted sail, following the fisherman?'

'More than once that reading made our eyes meet
and drained the color from our faces.
Still, it was a single instant overcame us:

'A devil's posted there behind us
who dresses us so cruelly,
putting each of this crew again to the sword

'O you who are twinned within a single fire,
if I have earned your favor while I lived,
if I have earned your favor -- in whatever measure --

'So your great labor may end in good,'
he said, 'why did your face just now
give off the sudden glimmer of a smile?'

'Yet I would not have you feel envious disdain
for your fellow-townsmen, since your life shall far outlast
the punishment of their treachery.'

such was I at that strange new sight.
I tried to see how the image fit the circle
and how it found its where in it.

When he who floods the whole world with his light
sinks steadily from sight within our hemisphere
until the day is spent on every side,

And like one who rejoices in his gains
but when the time comes and he loses,
turns all his thought to sadness and lament,

who in her longing to look upon their eyes and beaks
and to find the food to nourish them --
a task, though difficult, that gives her joy --

'I'm sending some men of mine along that way
to see if anyone is out to take the air.
Go with them -- they won't hurt you.'

In silence we went on until we came
to where a little stream spurts from the wood.
The redness of it makes me shudder still.

'already blind, to grope over their bodies,
and for two days called to them, though they were dead.
Then fasting had more power than grief.'

'In that order, all natures have their bent
according to their different destinies,
whether nearer to their source or farther from it.

The rain makes them howl like dogs.
The unholy wretches often turn their bodies,
making of one side a shield for the other.

When she who does imparadise my mind
had revealed the truth against
the present life of wretched mortals,

'not offer my desires their satisfaction?
I would not await your question
if I in-you'd me as you in-me'd you.'

'not offer my desires their satisfaction?
I would not await your question
if I in-you'd me as you in-me'd you.'

'Not the Seraph that most ingods himself,
not Moses, Samuel, or whichever John you please --
none of these, I say, not even Mary,

The many people and their ghastly wounds
did so intoxicate my eyes
that I was moved to linger there and weep.

And that one least removed from the blazing point of light
possessed the clearest flame, because, I think,
it was the one that is the most intruthed by it.

'Nor will I hold my peace because another hears me.
It will be wise of him to keep in mind
the truth the Spirit has revealed.

As the two poets neared the tree
a voice from among the boughs called out:
'This is a food that you shall lack.'

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

'You taught me how man makes himself immortal.
And how much gratitude I owe for that
my tongue, while I still live, must give report.

'when, in our disgrace, we move off from the others
we shout her name who made herself a beast
inside the beast-shaped rough-hewn wood.

'please remember me. I am La Pia.
Siena made me, in Maremma I was undone.
He knows how, the one who, to marry me,

Then, passing on beneath a vaulting forest,
emptied through fault of her who trusted in the snake,
we measured our steps to an angelic song.

Just as the waves clash above Charybdis,
one breaking on the other when they meet,
so here the souls move in their necessary dance.

'Surely you recall, two nights ago,
the moon, already full, did you no harm
at any time in the deep wood.'
These were his words while we were moving on.

His answer was: 'More than a thousand lie
here with me: both the second Frederick
and the Cardinal. Of the rest I do not speak.'

Then, passing on beneath a vaulting forest,
emptied through fault of her who trusted in the snake,
we measured our steps to an angelic song.

'The proud and insolent race, playing the dragon
at the back of him who flees, but mild as a lamb
to him who shows his teeth -- or else his purse,

'Ill-giving and ill-keeping have stolen
the fair world from them and set them to this scuffle.
As for that, I prettify no words for it.

'Then each shall find again his miserable tomb,
shall take again his flesh and form,
and hear the judgment that eternally resounds.'

goes back indoors, grumbling here and there
like a wretch who knows not what to do,
then goes outside again and is restored to hope,

now eagerly took in the wider landscape.
I fixed my gaze upon the highest hill
rising from the sea into the sky.

'She is Semiramis, of whom we read
that she, once Ninus' wife, succeeded him.
She held sway in the land the Sultan rules.

each spark keeping to its flaming ring. They were
so many that their number ran to thousands more
than the successive doubling of a chessboard's squares.

'See the beast that forced me to turn back.
Save me from her, famous sage --
she makes my veins and pulses tremble.'

'Perfect life and high desert,' she said to me,
'set in a higher sphere a lady by whose rule
down in your world they take the robe and veil

'Here he laments the Frenchmen's silver.
"I saw him of Duera," you can say,
"there where they set the sinners out to cool."

And now, as in the haze of morning,
Mars, low on the western stretch of ocean,
sheds reddish light through those thick vapors,

'And you are right, for the humble and the mighty
up here in this life gaze into the mirror
in which, before you think them, thoughts shine clear.

But after they had shown their pleasure in each other,
they both stopped, silent, coram me,
so brightly flaming that they overcame my sight.

as a man, when he hears
the dogs, and branches snapping,
knows the boar and hunters near.

I saw such joy rain down on her,
conveyed within the minds and borne
by holy spirits framed to soar those heights,

To soar beyond the human cannot be described
in words. Let the example be enough to one
for whom grace holds this experience in store.

'and see that your way is as far from God's
as that highest heaven, which spins the fastest,
is distant from the earth.'

'I was a lamb among the holy flock
led by Dominic along the road
where sheep are fattened if they do not stray.

Between the legs the entrails dangled. I saw
the innards and the loathsome sack
that turns what one has swallowed into shit.

The hellish squall, which never rests,
sweeps spirits in its headlong rush,
tormenting, whirls and strikes them.

'And he who takes the next step sees in this
what separates the one style from the other.'
Then, as though with satisfaction, he was silent.

When it ran dark with blood
it cried again: 'Why do you tear me?
Have you no pity in you?

In the hour when the heat of day,
cooled by earth and at times by Saturn,
can no longer temper the cold of the moon,

Dawn was overtaking the darkness of the hour,
which fled before it, and I saw and knew
the distant trembling of the sea.

Then, passing on beneath a vaulting forest,
emptied through fault of her who trusted in the snake,
we measured our steps to an angelic song.

He was muttering and all I could make out
was a word like 'Gentucca' coming from his mouth,
where he felt most the justice that so wastes them.

I do not think there walks on earth today
a man so hard that he would not have been
transfixed by pity at what I saw next,

Once the bright and precious stones of the sixth light,
which scintillated in their setting there,
had silenced their angelic tones,

'But I implore you, living topaz
set into this priceless ornament,
that you reward my longing with your name.'

Off they set along the left-hand bank,
but first each pressed his tongue between his teeth
to blow a signal to their leader,
and he had made a trumpet of his asshole.

'Displayed for all to see will be the wicked deeds
by which his uncle and his brother brought disgrace
to so renowned a line and both their kingdoms.

In its depth I saw contained,
by love into a single volume bound,
the pages scattered through the universe:

'so that Torquatus, Quintius -- named
for his unkempt locks -- the Decii, the Fabii:
all achieved the fame that I am glad to keep.

'than the rest, held Holy Church within his arms.
He was from Tours and now by fasting purges
eels from Lake Bolsena served alla vernaccia.'

O men of Genoa, race estranged
from every virtue, crammed with every vice,
why have you not been driven from the earth?

'I see Him mocked a second time.
I see renewed the vinegar and gall--
between two living thieves I see Him slain.

And he to me: 'Turn back! What are you doing?
Look, there Farinata stands erect --
you can see all of him from the waist up.'

'"O brothers," I said, "who, in the course
of a hundred thousand perils, at last
have reached the west, to such brief wakefulness

'Here is she who broke faith with the ashes
of Sichaeus and slew herself for love.
The next is wanton Cleopatra.

'Love, quick to kindle in the gentle heart,
seized this man with the fair form taken from me.
The way of it afflicts me still.

'Your way of speaking makes it clear
that you are native to that noble city
to which I was perhaps too cruel.'

After I rested my wearied flesh a while,
I took my way again along the desert slope,
my firm foot always lower than the other.

'Then, coming lower, it finds whelps that snarl
more than their powers warrant,
and so in scorn the river turns its snout from them.

Ah Pisa, how you shame the people
of that fair land where 'sì' is heard!
Since your neighbors are so slow to punish you,

Thus spoke that light. And I gave heed,
then turned my eyes back to my lady --
whichever way I looked I was amazed,

From here we heard the whimpering of people
one ditch away, snuffling with their snouts
and beating on themselves with their own palms.

'For that his wily ways were ended
beneath the club of Hercules, who struck perhaps
a hundred blows, though he felt not the tenth.'

'Ravenna remains as it has been for years.
The eagle of Polenta broods over it
so that he covers Cervia with his wings.

To run its course through smoother water
the small bark of my wit now hoists its sail,
leaving that cruel sea behind.

'You saw,' he said, 'that ancient witch
who alone is purged with tears above us here.
And you saw how man is freed from her.

regally, with scorn still in her bearing,
she continued like one who, even as he speaks,
holds back his hottest words:

And he to me: 'This miserable state is borne
by the wretched souls of those who lived
without disgrace yet without praise.

While he was speaking a demon struck him
with his lash and said: 'Away, pimp!
there are no women here to trick.'

And he replied: 'It is my Nella
whose flooding tears so quickly brought me
to drink sweet wormwood in the torments.

'But tell me, among these people who are passing,
if you see any worthy of my notice,
for my thoughts keep going back to them alone.'

And then a she-wolf who, all hide and bones,
seemed charged with all the appetites
that have made many live in wretchedness

I could discern the features that I knew
and, lowering my hand toward his face,
asked: 'Are You here, Ser Brunetto?'

for the moment that the zenith
holds them balanced, until each of them,
in changing hemispheres, unbalances that belt,

'No houses then stood uninhabited,
nor had Sardanapalus as yet arrived
to show what might be done behind closed doors.