| 1 |
Rejoice, Florence, since you are so great that on sea and land you beat your wings, and your name spreads through Hell! |
| 4 |
Among the thieves I found five such citizens of yours that I feel shame, and you do not rise to honor by them. |
| 7 |
But if near morning one dreams the truth, you will feel, a short time from now, something of what Prato, not to speak of others, desires for you; |
| 10 |
and if it had already come, it would not be early. Would it already were, since it must come! for it will weigh on me more, the older 1 grow. |
| 13 |
We left, and up along the steps made for us earlier by the projecting bourns, my leader mounted, drawing me after him; |
| 16 |
and as we pursued our solitary way among the splinters and rocks of the ridge, our feet could not proceed without our hands. |
| 19 |
Then I grieved, and now I grieve again, when I consider what I saw, and I rein in my wit more than is my custom, |
| 22 |
that it may not run without virtue guiding it, so that, if a good star or something better has given me what is good, I may not deprive myself of it. |
| 25 |
As many fireflies as the peasant—resting on the hillside in the season when he who lights the world least hides from us his face, |
| 28 |
when the fly gives way to the mosquito—sees down along the valley, perhaps where he harvests and plows: |
| 31 |
with so many flames the eighth pocket was all shining, as I perceived when I was where I could see its depths. |
| 34 |
And as he who avenged himself with the bears saw Elijah’s chariot departing, when the horses rose so steeply to Heaven |
| 37 |
that he could not follow them with his eyes so as to see more than the flame alone, like a little cloud, rising up: |
| 40 |
so each moves along the throat of the ditch, for none displays its theft, and every flame steals away a sinner. |
| 43 |
I was standing erect on the bridge in order to see, so that if I had not grasped a projection, I would have fallen without being pushed. |
| 46 |
And my leader, who saw me so intent, said: “Within the fires are the spirits; each is swathed in that which burns him inwardly.” |
| 49 |
“My master,” I replied, “hearing you I am surer; but already it seemed to me that such was the case, and already I wanted to ask you: |
| 52 |
who is in that fire that comes so divided above that it seems to be rising from the pyre where Eteocles was put with his brother?” |
| 55 |
He answered me: “There within are punished Ulysses and Diomedes; thus together they go to punishment as they went to anger. |
| 58 |
And within their flame they bemoan the deceit of the horse that made the gate to send forth the Romans’ noble seed; |
| 61 |
there within they weep for the art that makes Deidamia, though dead, still grieve for Achilles; and there they bear the punishment for the Palladium.” |
| 64 |
“If they can speak within those flames,” I said, “master, much do I beg you, and beg again that each prayer may be worth a thousand, |
| 67 |
that you not refuse to wait until the horned flame comes here: see that I bend toward it with desire!” |
| 70 |
And he to me: “Your prayer is worthy of much praise, and therefore I grant it; but see that your tongue restrain itself. |
| 73 |
Let me speak, for I have conceived what you wish; for perhaps they would shun, because they were Greeks, your words.” |
| 76 |
When the flame had come to where my leader thought it the time and place, in this form I heard him speak: |
| 79 |
“O you who are two within one fire, if I deserved from you while I lived, if I deserved from you greatly or little |
| 82 |
when in the world I wrote my high verses, do not move away; but let one of you tell where, lost, he went to die.” |
| 85 |
The greater horn of the ancient flame began to shake, murmuring, like one a wind belabors; |
| 88 |
then, moving its peak here and there, as if it were a tongue that spoke, it cast out a voice and said: “When |
| 91 |
I departed from Circe, who held me back more than a year there near Gaeta, before Aeneas gave it that name, |
| 94 |
neither the sweetness of a son, nor compassion for my old father, nor the love owed to Penelope, which should have made her glad, |
| 97 |
could conquer within me the ardor that I had to gain experience of the world and of human vices and worth; |
| 100 |
but I put out on the deep, open sea alone, with one ship and with that little company by which I had not been deserted. |
| 103 |
The one shore and the other I saw as far as Spain, as far as Morocco, and the island of the Sardinians and the others whose shores are bathed by that sea. |
| 106 |
I and my companions were old and slow when we came to that narrow strait which Hercules marked with his warnings |
| 109 |
so that one should not go further; on the right hand I had left Seville, on the other I had already left Ceuta. |
| 112 |
‘O brothers,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand perils have reached the west, to this so brief vigil |
| 115 |
of our senses that remains, do not deny the experience, following the sun, of the world without people. |
| 118 |
Consider your sowing: you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.’ |
| 121 |
My companions I made so sharp for the voyage, with this little oration, that after it I could hardly have held them back; |
| 124 |
and, turning our stern toward the morning, of our oars we made wings for the mad flight, always gaining on the left side. |
| 127 |
Already all the stars of the other pole I saw at night, and our own pole so low that it did not rise above the floor of the sea. |
| 130 |
Five times renewed, and as many diminished, had been the light beneath the moon, since we had entered the deep pass, |
| 133 |
when there appeared to us a mountain, dark in the distance, and it seemed to me higher than any I had seen. |
| 136 |
We rejoiced, but it quickly turned to weeping; for from the new land a whirlwind was born and struck the forequarter of the ship. |
| 139 |
Three times it made the ship to turn about with all the waters, at the fourth to raise its stern aloft and the prow to go down, as it pleased another, |
| 142 |
until the sea had closed over us.” |
