Inferno: Canto XIV
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
Because the charity of my native place Constrained me, gathered I the scattered leaves, And gave them back to him, who now was hoarse.
Then came we to the confine, where disparted The second round is from the third, and where A horrible form of Justice is beheld.
Clearly to manifest these novel things, I say that we arrived upon a plain, Which from its bed rejecteth every plant;
The dolorous forest is a garland to it All round about, as the sad moat to that; There close upon the edge we stayed our feet.
The soil was of an arid and thick sand, Not of another fashion made than that Which by the feet of Cato once was pressed.
Vengeance of God, O how much oughtest thou By each one to be dreaded, who doth read That which was manifest unto mine eyes!
Of naked souls beheld I many herds, Who all were weeping very miserably, And over them seemed set a law diverse.
Supine upon the ground some folk were lying; And some were sitting all drawn up together, And others went about continually.
Those who were going round were far the more, And those were less who lay down to their torment, But had their tongues more loosed to lamentation.
O’er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall, Were raining down dilated flakes of fire, As of the snow on Alp without a wind.
As Alexander, in those torrid parts Of India, beheld upon his host Flames fall unbroken till they reached the ground.
Whence he provided with his phalanxes To trample down the soil, because the vapour Better extinguished was while it was single;
Thus was descending the eternal heat, Whereby the sand was set on fire, like tinder Beneath the steel, for doubling of the dole.
Without repose forever was the dance Of miserable hands, now there, now here, Shaking away from off them the fresh gleeds.
“Master,” began I, “thou who overcomest All things except the demons dire, that issued Against us at the entrance of the gate,
Who is that mighty one who seems to heed not The fire, and lieth lowering and disdainful, So that the rain seems not to ripen him?”
And he himself, who had become aware That I was questioning my Guide about him, Cried: “Such as I was living, am I, dead.
If Jove should weary out his smith, from whom He seized in anger the sharp thunderbolt, Wherewith upon the last day I was smitten,
And if he wearied out by turns the others In Mongibello at the swarthy forge, Vociferating, ‘Help, good Vulcan, help!’
Even as he did there at the fight of Phlegra, And shot his bolts at me with all his might, He would not have thereby a joyous vengeance.”
Then did my Leader speak with such great force, That I had never heard him speak so loud: “O Capaneus, in that is not extinguished
Thine arrogance, thou punished art the more; Not any torment, saving thine own rage, Would be unto thy fury pain complete.”
Then he turned round to me with better lip, Saying: “One of the Seven Kings was he Who Thebes besieged, and held, and seems to hold
God in disdain, and little seems to prize him; But, as I said to him, his own despites Are for his breast the fittest ornaments.
Now follow me, and mind thou do not place As yet thy feet upon the burning sand, But always keep them close unto the wood.”
Speaking no word, we came to where there gushes Forth from the wood a little rivulet, Whose redness makes my hair still stand on end.
As from the Bulicame springs the brooklet, The sinful women later share among them, So downward through the sand it went its way.
The bottom of it, and both sloping banks, Were made of stone, and the margins at the side; Whence I perceived that there the passage was.
“In all the rest which I have shown to thee Since we have entered in within the gate Whose threshold unto no one is denied,
Nothing has been discovered by thine eyes So notable as is the present river, Which all the little flames above it quenches.”
These words were of my Leader; whence I prayed him That he would give me largess of the food, For which he had given me largess of desire.
“In the mid-sea there sits a wasted land,” Said he thereafterward, “whose name is Crete, Under whose king the world of old was chaste.
There is a mountain there, that once was glad With waters and with leaves, which was called Ida; Now ’tis deserted, as a thing worn out.
Rhea once chose it for the faithful cradle Of her own son; and to conceal him better, Whene’er he cried, she there had clamours made.
A grand old man stands in the mount erect, Who holds his shoulders turned tow’rds Damietta, And looks at Rome as if it were his mirror.
His head is fashioned of refined gold, And of pure silver are the arms and breast; Then he is brass as far down as the fork.
From that point downward all is chosen iron, Save that the right foot is of kiln-baked clay, And more he stands on that than on the other.
Each part, except the gold, is by a fissure Asunder cleft, that dripping is with tears, Which gathered together perforate that cavern.
From rock to rock they fall into this valley; Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon they form; Then downward go along this narrow sluice
Unto that point where is no more descending. They form Cocytus; what that pool may be Thou shalt behold, so here ’tis not narrated.”