The kindly master said: “Do you not ask?
Who are these spirits you see before you?
I’d have you know, before you go ahead,
they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits,
that’s not enough, because they lacked baptism,
the portal of the faith that you embrace.
And if they lived before Christianity,
They did not worship God in f itting ways;
And of such spirits I myself am one.
For these defects, and for no other evil,
We are now lost and punished just with this:
We have no hope and yet we live in longing.”
– Dante’s Limbo