The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri [best thriller novels of all time TXT] 📗

nor none other cares for me;593
Hence among these I go with downcast front.”
And I to him: “What violence or what chance
Led thee astray so far from Campaldino,594
That never has thy sepulture been known?”
“Oh,” he replied, “at Casentino’s foot
A river crosses named Archiano, born
Above the Hermitage in Apennine.595
There where the name thereof becometh void596
Did I arrive, pierced through and through the throat,
Fleeing on foot, and bloodying the plain;
There my sight lost I, and my utterance
Ceased in the name of Mary, and thereat
I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained.
Truth will I speak, repeat it to the living;
God’s Angel took me up, and he of hell597
Shouted: ‘O thou from heaven, why dost thou rob me?
Thou bearest away the eternal part of him,
For one poor little tear, that takes him from me;
But with the rest I’ll deal in other fashion!’
Well knowest thou how in the air is gathered598
That humid vapor which to water turns,
Soon as it rises where the cold doth grasp it.
He joined that evil will, which aye seeks evil,599
To intellect, and moved the mist and wind
By means of power, which his own nature gave;
Thereafter, when the day was spent, the valley
From Pratomagno to the great yoke covered600
With fog, and made the heaven above intent,
So that the pregnant air to water changed;601
Down fell the rain, and to the gullies came
Whate’er of it earth tolerated not;
And as it mingled with the mighty torrents,
Towards the royal river with such speed
It headlong rushed, that nothing held it back.
My frozen body near unto its outlet
The robust Archian found, and into Arno
Thrust it, and loosened from my breast the cross602
I made of me, when agony o’ercame me;
It rolled me on the banks and on the bottom,
Then with its booty covered and begirt me.”
“Ah, when thou hast returned unto the world,
And rested thee from thy long journeying,”
After the second followed the third spirit,
“Do thou remember me who am the Pia;
Siena made me, unmade me Maremma;603
He knoweth it, who had encircled first,
Espousing me, my finger with his gem.” Canto VI

Sordello.

Whene’er is broken up the game of Zara,604
He who has lost remains behind despondent,
The throws repeating, and in sadness learns;
The people with the other all depart;
One goes in front, and one behind doth pluck him,
And at his side one brings himself to mind;
He pauses not, and this and that one hears;
They crowd no more to whom his hand he stretches,
And from the throng he thus defends himself.
Even such was I in that dense multitude,
Turning to them this way and that my face,
And, promising, I freed myself therefrom.
There was the Aretine, who from the arms605
Untamed of Ghin di Tacco had his death,606
And he who fleeing from pursuit was drowned.607
There was imploring with his hands outstretched
Frederick Novello, and that one of Pisa608
Who made the good Marzucco seem so strong.
I saw Count Orso; and the soul divided609
By hatred and by envy from its body,
As it declared, and not for crime committed,
Pierre de la Brosse I say; and here provide610
While still on earth the Lady of Brabant,
So that for this she be of no worse flock!
As soon as I was free from all those shades
Who only prayed that someone else may pray,
So as to hasten their becoming holy,
Began I: “It appears that thou deniest,
O light of mine, expressly in some text,
That orison can bend decree of Heaven;611
And ne’ertheless these people pray for this.
Might then their expectation bootless be?
Or is to me thy saying not quite clear?”
And he to me: “My writing is explicit,
And not fallacious is the hope of these,
If with sane intellect ’tis well regarded;
For top of judgment doth not vail itself,612
Because the fire of love fulfils at once
What he must satisfy who here installs him.
And there, where I affirmed that proposition,
Defect was not amended by a prayer,
Because the prayer from God was separate.
Verily, in so deep a questioning
Do not decide, unless she tell it thee,
Who light ’twixt truth and intellect shall be.
I know not if thou understand; I speak
Of Beatrice; her shalt thou see above,
Smiling and happy, on this mountain’s top.”
And I: “Good Leader, let us make more haste,
For I no longer tire me as before;
And see, e’en now the hill a shadow casts.”613
“We will go forward with this day,” he answered,
“As far as now is possible for us;
But otherwise the fact is than thou thinkest.
Ere thou art up there, thou shalt see return
Him, who now hides himself behind the hill,
So that thou dost not interrupt his rays.
But yonder there behold! a soul that stationed
All, all alone is looking hitherward;
It will point out to us the quickest way.”
We came up unto it; O Lombard soul,
How lofty and disdainful thou didst bear thee,
And grand and slow in moving of thine eyes!
Nothing whatever did it say to us,
But let us go our way, eying us only
After the manner of a couchant lion;
Still near to it Virgilius drew, entreating
That it would point us out the best ascent;
And it replied not unto his demand,
But of our native land and of our life
It questioned us; and the sweet Guide began:
“Mantua,”⁠—and the shade, all in itself recluse,
Rose tow’rds him from the place where first it was,
Saying: “O Mantuan, I am Sordello614
Of thine own land!” and one embraced