The Divine Comedy — Dante Alighieri

Ca»to XXVI. HELL. 99 Within they mourn thd art, through which even dead Still lost Achilles Deidajnia does grieve ; They suffer there the rapt Palladium dread." " If they within the flames are granted leave To speak," I said, " O master, I beseech, And prayer a thousand times reiterate weave, Give me not now denial of their speech. When once the biforked flame has travelled here : See how with longing I towards them reach." And he to me replied, " I own your prayer ^^ Is worthy of all praise, and it I grant ; But let your tongue all utterance forbear. Leave speech to me. I know what you do want To ask them ; haply if your speech they hear. Those Greeks would yield you but attention scant." " After the moving flame had reached to where It seemed unto my leader time and place, In this shape of his parley was I 'ware. " you, who double in one flame embrace. If, while I lived, I merited from you, ^ If I have merited from you some grace When iti this world, the lofty verse I drew. Move you not on ; but one of you relate Where, self-destroyed, to perish he withdrew. The greater horn of the old flame thereat ^ Began to wave and bow with murmuring chime, like to a flame on wliich the wind does beat. Thence moving here and there its crest in time. As though it were a tongue that uttered speech. It cast a voice abroad and said, " What time ^ Circe I left, who lured me in her reach Near to G-aeta, upwards of a year. Before Eneas had thus named the beach ; Not my son's sweetness, nor compassionate fear For my old father, nor the lawful love ^ That should have cheered Penelope so dear. Could from my mind the ardent wish remove Of the wide world experience to attain. And human vices and man's worth to prove. Once more I laimched upon the open main ^^ With one sole bark and those companions tnie. The few who did not even desert me then. Line 84. The highly poetical idea of this last voyage of Ulysses into the unknown ocean appears to have been invented by Dante, as no such story has come down from classical times.

103 HELL. Cakto XXVI. As far as Spain both shores I past in view, Morocco, and Sardinia's seagirt bourne, And the other islands which those waters strew. ^^ I and my comrades were grown old and worn When we had reached unto the narrow bar ' Where Hercules his motto placed to warn Mankind no farther o'er the waves to dare. On the right hand I left Seville behind, "<> On the other Ceuta was already far. * brothers !* then I said, * who here have joined Through many thousand perils to the West, To this so brief a vigil of the mind, And high perception, that to you does rest, ^^^ You will not all experience refuse. Following the sun, of the world without a guest. Over your noble birthright you should muse ; To live like senseless brutes you were not made, But knowledge to pursue and virtue use.' ^^ With this concise oration which I said I made my comrades for the voyage so fain, That aftei*wards I scarcely them had stayed. Our stem still turned towards the mom, again With oars, we made our wings for the mad design, **^ Aye to the larboard steering o'er the main. Now, of the other Pole, the stars that shine. The night beheld, and ours did scarcely rise. So far adown they sank, above the brine. Five times there filled and vanished to our eyes ^^ The light that streams from the moon's low rim. Since we had entered on our high emprise, When there appeared to us a mountain dim In the far distance, which to me appears Higher than other mountain e'er could climb. Then we rejoiced, but soon all changed to tears ; For from that land new-found a storm arose, And on its quarter our frail bark it sheers ; Three times it turned it round with whirling throes, At the fourth time the stern uprose in air. And as to one it pleased the prow down goes Until the sea had closed upon us there." Line 107. The Straits of Gibraltar. Line 117. In the Middle Ages it was believed that any lands that might exist in the Antipodes were, and most be, uninhabited. Line 133. The mountain of Purgatory, which Dante places in mid-ocean, the antipodes to Jerusalem, which he considers the meridian of our own inhabited hemisphere.

CANTO XXVII. The flame which contained Ulysses and Diomed having departed, another comes near the poets and addresses them finally in Tuscan. On being questioned by Dante he states that he was Count Gnido da Montefeltro, and relates why he was condenmed to such a punishment. Alseadt was the flame erect and still, To speak no more, and from us went away With licence granted at the sweet bard's will* Another then which came behind did stay^ And drew our eyes towards its crest, at first * By sound confused that from it found its way. Like Phalaris's bull (which bellowed first With cries of him [in this most just it was] Who first had wrought it with his file accurst), Eoared with the sound of torture, that its mass Seemed to be wholly overcome with pain, Although it was but fashioned out of brass ; So from the absence of all passage plain From the fire's summit in its own mute song There issued forth the lamentable strain. ** But after it had found its way along The fire's point, which it quivered as it past, As words in passing would have done the tongue, We heard it say, ** O you to whom I cast My voice, who spake now in the Lombard speech, ^ Saying, Now go, from you no more is askt, Though somewhat late perchance to you I reach. Be not fatigued with me in speech to stand. It irks me not although in flames I bleach. If you in sooth art now to this blind land ^ Fallen from that Latin region sweet and far, To which I wholly owe the crime I planned^ Say if the Romans now have peace or war ; For near Urbino I was mountaineer. And where the Tiber cleaves the rocky scaur.*' ^^ I was still bending down intent to hear, Until my leader touched me on the side. Saying, ** Speak you, a Latin soul is here.*^ Line 7, The instrument of torture invented for Phalaris of ^ioily by Perillas, who was chosen by the tyrant for its first victim. Line 29. The town of Montefeltro, situated between Urbino and the part of the Apennines in which the Tiber rises, of which Guido was a native.