Classic Poem

CANTO XXXIV

" The banners of the King of Hell proceed
Toward us, " my Guide said. " If thine eyes avail
To espy him, forward gaze and give good heed. "
As when the thick autumnal mists exhale,
Or when night draws down on our hemisphere,
A mill shows far away with turning sail,
Such structure to my eyes seemed now to appear;
And, for the wind that blew, I shrank behind
My Master, because else no rock was near.
Now was I (verse for them I fear to find)
There where the frozen spirits as in glass
Were covered wholly, and there like straw they shined.
Some prostrate lie, some standing in their place,
This on its head, that on its soles upright,
Another like a bow bends feet to face.
When we had gone so far as appeared right
For the good Master's purpose to reveal
To me the creature that was once so bright,
He stept aside and stayed me upon my heel,
Saying: " Behold Dis, and the place behold
Where thou thy soul with fortitude must steel. "
How faint I then became, how frozen cold,
Ask me not, Reader; for I write it not,
Because all speech would fail, whate'er it told.
I died not, yet of life remained no jot.
Think thou then, if of wit thou hast any share,
What I became, deprived of either lot.
The Emperor of the kingdom of despair
By half the breast emerged out of the ice;
And I may with a giant more compare
Than giants with those monstrous arms of his.
Consider now how huge must be the whole
Proportioned to the part of such a size.
If he was once fair as he now is foul,
And 'gainst his Maker dared his brows to raise,
Fitly from him all streams of sorrow roll.
O what a marvel smote me with amaze
When I beheld three faces on his head!
The one in front showed crimson to my gaze;
Thereunto were the other faces wed
Over the middle of either shoulder's height,
And where the crest would be, their union made.
The right was coloured between yellow and white,
The left was such to look upon as those
Who come from where Nile flows out of the night.
Two mighty wings from under each arose
Commeasurable with so great a bird:
Never did sails at sea such form disclose.
Feathers they had not, but like bats appeared
The fashion of them, and with these he flapped
So that three winds were from their motion stirred.
Thence all Cocytus was in frost enrapt.
He wept with six eyes, and the tears beneath
Over three chins with bloody slaver dropt.
At each mouth he was tearing with his teeth
A sinner, as is flax by heckle frayed;
Each of the three of them so suffereth.
The one in front naught of the biting made
Beside the clawing, which at whiles so wrought
That on the back the skin remained all flayed.
" That soul up there to the worst penance brought
Is Judas the Iscariot, " spoke my Lord.
" His head within, he plies his legs without.
Of the other two, hanging with head downward,
Brutus it is whom the black mouth doth maul.
See how he writhes and utters not a word!
Cassius the other who seems so large to sprawl.
But night again is rising; time is now
That we depart from hence. We have seen all. "
I clung about his neck, he showed me how,
And choosing well the time and place to trust,
When the great wings were opened wide enow,
He clutched him to the shaggy-sided bust,
And climbed from tuft to tuft down, slipping by
Between the matted hair and icy crust.
When we were come to that part where the thigh
Turns on the thickness of the haunches' swell,
My Guide with labour and with difficulty
Turned his head where his feet had been; the fell
He grappled then as one who is mounting, so
That I conceived us going back to Hell.
" Hold fast by me, for needs must that we go, "
Said my Guide, panting like a man quite spent,
" By such a ladder from the core of woe. "
And issuing through the rock where it was rent
He made me sit on the edging barrier;
Then toward me moved, eye upon step intent.
I lifted up my eyes, and Lucifer
Thought to have seen as I had left him last;
And saw him with legs uppermost appear.
And if into perplexity I was cast
Let them be judge who are so gross of wit
They see not what the point is I had passed.
" Rise up now, " said the Master, " upon thy feet.
The way is long, and arduous the road.
The sun in mid-tierce now regaineth heat. "
No palace-chamber was it that now showed
Its flinty floor, but natural dungeon this,
Which but a starving of the light allowed.
" Master, before I pluck me from the abyss, "
Said I, when I had risen erect, " speak on
A little, so my error to dismiss.
Where is the ice? And how is he, head prone,
Thus fixt? And how so soon is it possible
The sun's course has from morn to evening run? "
And he: " Thou dost imagine thyself still
On the other side of the centre, where I gript
The hair of the Worm that thrids the earth with ill.
There wast thou while with thee I downward slipt;
But when I turned round, from that point we fled
Whereonto weight from every part is heaped.
But now thou art under the hemisphere's deep bed
Opposite that where spreads the continent
Of land, 'neath whose meridian perished
The Man who sinless came and sinless went.
Thou hast thy feet upon a little sphere,
Whose surface is Giudecca's complement.
When it is evening there, 'tis morning here.
And he whose hair for us a ladder made
Is still fixed as before and doth not stir.
He fell from Heaven on this side and there stayed.
And all the land which ere that stood forth dry,
Covered itself with sea, by him dismayed,
And came to our hemisphere; and, him to fly
Perhaps, what on this side is seen around
Left its place here void and fled up on high. "
There is a cave that stretches underground
Far from Beelzebub as his tomb extends,
Known not by sight, but only by the sound
Of a stream flowing, that therein descends
Along the hollow of rock that it has gnawed,
Nor falleth steeply down, but winds and bends.
The Guide and I, entering that secret road,
Toiled to climb back to the bright world beyond,
Nor thought on any resting-place bestowed.
We mounted, he first, and I following fond,
To glimpse those things whose beauty nothing mars,
Through a round opening, in the heavens enthroned.
Thence issuing, we beheld again the stars.