The Divine Comedy — Dante Alighieri

GAm!0 XXL The poets pass into the fifth ward, and, lookingdown from the bridge, Dante discovers it to be a lake of boiling pitch. While gazing into its depths a demon alights on the bridge, bearing a sinner on his back, whom he throws into the lake. As the wretch rises to the snrf aoe a crowd of demons, hitherto concealed imder the bridge, attack him with their hooks and force him to dive into the boiling pitch.

Yirgil issnes forth to obtun a safe passage for Dante, and being told that the bridge over the sixth valley is in ruins they follow a band of demons, whom their chief has directed to guide the poets to another bridge over the next ward.

So on from bridge to bridge in parlance new, Of whicli my Comedy no record keeps, We past, and reaching to the summit, view, Besting, that other fissure in the deeps Of Malebolge and its wailings vain. ^ Gktzing, a marvellous darkness o'er it sweeps. As within Venice' Arsenal, amain In winter time the pitch tenacious bums Their unsound vessels there to caulk again.

Since they can sail no longer, and by turns One builds a new ship, and one stops with tow • The ribs of one that from h,r voyage returns ; One builds anew the stem, and one the prow ; Some make the oars, and some the rigging start. And some the foresail, and the mizen stow : So not by fire, but by Almighty art. Bubbled the lake of boiling pitch below That clinging slimed the bank in every part.

I saw it, but therein nought else did know Except the bubbles which the boiling raised, And the whole swell and fall in changing flow. Whilst underneath I then intently gazed. My master shouting out, " Behold there, straight ! Drew me towards him from my place amazed. Then turned I, like a man, by whom too late ^ Is seen some object which he fain would fly. Whose forces at the sudden fear abate. And he runs instantly it strikes his eye.

I saw behind us both a devil dark. That running o'er the sharp-set rocks drew nigh. '* Ah me ! how fearful was his aspect stark ! And how in action cruelly he strode As his wide wings and active feet I mark !

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Canto XXI. HELL. 79 TJpon his shoulder towering high and broad. And on his hips a sinning wight he bore, ^ While by the feet he firmly gripped his load. " O Malebranche," from our bridge's shore He cried, '' behold Saint Zita's magistrate : Dip him below the while I turn for more In the same land, where many more await, ^ Except Buonturo, each man there is cheat ; For lucre no to yes they alter straight." He cast him down, and o'er the steep rocks fleet He turned away, a mastiff loosed from hold Ne'er followed on a thief with greater heat. ^ The sinner dived, and rose again uprolled, When 'neath the bridge concealed the demons cried, " This place the Holy Visage doth not hold : One swims not here as in the Serchio's tide ; But if our grappling-irons thou wouldst 'scape, Try not too much above the pitch to bide." Then with a hundred hooks they clawed his shape, And cried, " 'Neath covert thou must gambol here. And see how much whilst hidden thou canst rape." Not otherwise the scullion troop appear ^ When they within the boiling cauldron drown The meat with hooks that it may disappear. Then my good master : " That it be not Imown That thou art here," he said, *' in some rock's shade That giveth present shelter sit thee down. ®* And for no injury to me essayed Fear anything, since I these things have told, And seen ere now the devils at parade." Then did he pass beyond our bridge's hold,

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And of the sixth ridge, as he reached the side.

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Well had he need of all his calmness bold. With such a fury and such tempest tide As household dogs some beggar wretch surround. Who on the sudden begs where he is tied. Line 37. *' Malebranche" — evil hounds — ^is the generic name of these demons. Line 88. " Saint Zita" was the goardian saint of Lnoca, which the demon asserts to be so fnU of pnblic cheats.

Perhaps "jobber** is the nearest approxiination to the Italian word barattiere, as here used by Dante. It need hardly be said that the exception in favour of Buonturo Dato is ironical, he being the greatest ''jobber" of the batch. Line 48. A picture of Christ's face, miraculously imprinted on a hand* kerchief with which he wiped off his sweat in the agony, and which was religiously preserved at Lucca. The Serchio is a river near the town.