Purgatorio: Canto XVIII
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
And he has one foot in the grave already, Who shall erelong lament that monastery, And sorry be of having there had power,
Because his son, in his whole body sick, And worse in mind, and who was evil-born, He put into the place of its true pastor.”
If more he said, or silent was, I know not, He had already passed so far beyond us; But this I heard, and to retain it pleased me.
And he who was in every need my succour Said: “Turn thee hitherward; see two of them Come fastening upon slothfulness their teeth.”
In rear of all they shouted: “Sooner were The people dead to whom the sea was opened, Than their inheritors the Jordan saw;
And those who the fatigue did not endure Unto the issue, with Anchises’ son, Themselves to life withouten glory offered.”
Then when from us so separated were Those shades, that they no longer could be seen, Within me a new thought did entrance find,
Whence others many and diverse were born; And so I lapsed from one into another, That in a reverie mine eyes I closed,
And meditation into dream transmuted.