Classic Poem

CANTO XXXIII

That sinner raised up from the brute repast
His mouth, wiping it on the hairs left few
About the head he had all behind made waste.
Then he began: " Thou willest that I renew
Desperate grief, strangling my very heart
Even at the thought, before I tell it you.
But if my words prove seed for fruit to start
Of infamy for the traitor I gnaw now
Thou shalt hear words that hot with weeping smart.
Albeit I know not who thou art, nor how
Thou hast descended hither, Florentine,
Unless thy speech deceive me, seemest thou.
Know then that I was the Count Ugolin,
And this man Roger, the Archbishop: Hell
Neighbours us, as thou'lt hear, for the same sin.
How into a snare I by his malice fell
Because I trusted in his perfidy,
And after came to die, needs not to tell.
But whaThath not yet been reported thee,
How cruel was that dying, hear, and then
Judge with what injury he hath injured me.
The narrow slit within the rock-ribbed pen
From me named Famine's tower (and as I think
It yet shall hold the bones of other men)
Had shown me more than one moon through its chink
When evil dream revealed what peril faced
My feet, and how I stood close on the brink.
This man appeared as a great lord who chased
The wolf and wolf-cubs on the hills that screen
Lucca from where the Pisan towers are placed.
He chased with hounds, cunning and fierce and lean.
Before the Master there Gualandi went;
Sismondi and Lanfranchi rode between.
Full soon it seemed both sire and sons were spent;
And in my vision the strained flanks grew red
Where by the tearing teeth the flesh was rent.
When I awoke dark on my stony bed
I heard my children weeping in their sleep,
Them who were with me, and they cried for bread.
Cruel art thou if thou from tears canst keep
To think of what my heart misgave in fear.
If thou weep not, at what then canst thou weep?
By now they were awake, and the hour drew near
When food should be set by us on the floor.
Still in the trouble of our dreams we were:
And down in the horrible tower I heard the door
Locked up. Without a word I looked anew
Into my sons' faces, all the four.
I wept not, so to stone within I grew.
They wept; and one, my little Anselm, cried:
" You look so, Father, what has come on you?"
But I shed not a tear, neither replied
All that day nor the next night, until dawn
Of a new day over the world rose wide.
A cranny of light crept in upon the stone
Of that dungeon of woe; and I saw there
On those four faces the aspect of my own.
I bit upon both hands in my despair.
And they supposing it was in the access
Of hunger, rose up with a sudden prayer,
And said: " O Father, it will hurt much less
If you of us eat: take what once you gave
To clothe us, this flesh of our wretchedness."
Thereon I calmed myself, their grief to save.
That day and the one after we were dumb.
Hard earth, couldst thou not open for our grave?
But when to the fourth morning we were come,
Gaddo at my feet stretched himself with a cry:
" Father, why won't you help me?" and lay numb
And there died. Ev'n as thou seest me, saw I,
One after the other, the three fall. They drew,
Between the fifth and sixth day, their last sigh.
I, blind now, groping arms about them threw,
And still called on them that were two days dead.
Then fasting did what anguish could not do. "
He ceased, and with eyes twisted in his head
His teeth seized on the lamentable skull
Strong as a dog's upon a bony shred.
Ah, Pisa! thou offence to the whole people
Of the fair land where sound is heard of Si ,
Since in thy neighbours' hands vengeance is dull,
Caprara and Gorgona moved be
Into Arno's mouth, and Arno back be rolled,
That every living soul be drowned in thee!
For if Count Ugolin by treachery sold
Thy forts, it was not cause thou shouldst torment
His little sons, whatever of him was told.
Their youth, O thou new Thebes, made innocent
Uguiccione and Brigata, and those
Two others who in my verse have made lament.
We passed on, where the frost imprisons close
Another crew, stark in a rugged heap,
Not bent down, but reversed all where they froze.
The very weeping there forbids to weep;
And the grief, finding in the eyes a stop,
Turns inward, to make anguish bite more deep.
For their first tears collect in one great drop,
And like a vizor of crystal, in the space
Beneath the brows, fill all the hollow up.
And now although, as with a callous place
Upon the skin, because the cold stung so,
All feeling had departed from my face,
It seemed as if I felt some wind to blow.
Wherefore I: " Master, who is it moves this air?
Is not all heat extinguished here below? "
Whereto he answered: " Soon shalt thou be where,
Seeing the cause which poureth down the gust,
Thine eye to this the answer shall declare. "
And one sad shadow amid the icy crust
Cried to us: " O ye souls, so cruel found,
That into this last outpost ye are thrust,
Raise the stiff veils wherein my face is bound,
So that the grief which chokes my heart have vent
A little, ere the weeping harden round. "
Wherefore I: " Tell me, so I to this consent,
Who thou art, and if I do not succour thee,
May I to the bottom of the ice be sent. "
" I am Friar Alberic, " then he answered me;
" He of the fruits out of the bad garden,
Who, dates for figs, receive here my full fee. "
" Ah, " replied I to him, " thou art dead, then,
Already? " He answered, " I have no knowledge
How stands my body in the world of men.
This Ptolomea hath such privilege
That often a soul falls down into this place
Ere Atropos the fated thread abridge.
And that thou may'st more willingly the glaze
Of tears wipe from my cheek-bones' nakedness,
Know that, on the instant when the soul betrays,
As I did, comes a demon to possess
Her body, and thenceforth ruleth over it
Until the timed hour come for its decease.
She falls down headlong to this cistern-pit.
The body of him who winters there behind
Perhaps among men still appears to sit.
Thou must, if newly come, call it to mind.
It is Ser Branca d' Oria. Years enough
Have passed since he was to his prison assigned. "
" I think, " I said, " that thou dost lie; whereof
Proof is, that Branca d' Oria never died,
And eats, drinks, sleeps, and puts clothes on and off. "
" Up there with the Evil Talons, " he replied,
" Where sticky pitch boils in the trenches' bed,
Not yet had Michel Zanche come to bide,
When this man left a devil in his stead
In his own body, and in one of his house
Who with him played the traitor and did the deed.
But stretch thy hand out hither and unclose
My eyes for me. " And I unclosed them not,
And to be rude to him was courteous.
Ah, Genoese, who have utterly forgot
All honesty and in corruption abound,
Why from the earth will none your people blot?
For with Romagna's evillest spirit I found
One of you, who, for deeds he did contrive
Even now in soul is in Cocytus drowned
And still in body appears on earth alive.