Classic Poem

CANTO XX

New verses of new pangs must I compose
To fill the first book's twentieth canto and tell
Of the submerged spirits and their woes.
I was now stationed so that I could well
Look down into the new discovered deep
Bathed in the tears of anguish as they fell.
In the round valley I saw a people weep
As they came on, all silent, at the pace
Our Litanies in their processions keep.
When deeper down my eyes perused the place,
Each appeared strangely to be wrenched awry
Between the upper chest and lower face.
For toward the reins the chin was screwed, whereby
With gait reversed they were constrained to go,
For to look forth this posture would deny.
Perhaps by palsy's overmastering throe
Some may have been thus quite distorted, yet
I ne'er saw such, nor think it could be so.
Reader, so God vouchsafe thee fruit to get
Of what thou readest, think now in thy mind
If I could keep my cheeks from being wet
When this our image in such twisted kind
I saw, that tears out of their eyelids prest
Ran down their buttocks by the cleft behind.
Truly I wept, apposed upon the breast
Of the hard granite, so that my Guide said:
" Art thou then still so foolish, like the rest?
Here pity lives when it is rightly dead.
What more impiety can he avow
Whose heart rebelleth at God's judgement dread?
Lift up thy head, lift up, and see him now
For whom in the eyes of Thebes earth clove her floor:
Whereat they all cried: " Whither rushest thou,
Amphiaraus? Quittest thou the war?"
And he stopt not upon his headlong track
To Minos down, who clutcheth evermore.
Mark how the shoulders now his bosom make.
Because he wished too far before to see
He looks behind and ever goeth back.
Behold Tiresias, who so changed that he
Lost his male semblance and became woman,
Causing the transformed members all to agree.
And afterwards he needs must over again
Strike with his rod the two convolved snakes
Ere he could reassume the plumes of man.
With back to his belly, next his footing takes
Aruns, who in hills of Luni, where his hoe
The Carrarese plies and his dwelling makes
'Mid the white marbles, had the cave below
For his abode, wherefrom the prospect wide
Of stars and sea he had not to forgo.
And yonder she who both her breasts doth hide
With her dishevelled tresses from thy view,
And has all the hairy skin on the other side,
Was Manto, who searched many countries through,
Then settled there where I was born; wherefore
It pleaseth me to instruct thee as now I do.
After her father had passed out by death's door
And Bacchus' city in servitude was thralled,
Over the world she roamed a long time more.
Above in beauteous Italy lieth, walled
By the Alps behind it, Germany's confine
Over Tirol, a lake Benacus called.
Through a thousand springs and more between Pennine
And Garda and Val Camonica is besprent
The land by streams that in that lake resign.
Midmost a place is where the pastor of Trent
And he of Brescia and the Veronese
Might give their blessing if that road they went.
Peschiera, beautiful and strong fortress,
Sits where the shore around is lowest seen
To front the Brescians and the Bergamese.
There down must slide what is not held within
The bosom of Benacus, and below
It swells to a river amid pastures green.
Soon as the water setteth head to flow,
No more Benacus, Mincio it is named
Far as Governol, where it meeteth Po.
Soon is his current on the level tamed
And widens into shallows smooth as glass,
At whiles in summer for miasma blamed.
By that way did the unmellowed virgin pass,
And saw land bare of any denizen
Or tillage, in the midst of the morass.
There, to shun all communion with men,
She stayed, her arts amid her thralls to ply;
There lived she and left her body in that fen.
Afterwards those who dwelt dispersed anigh
Drew to that spot which had for bastions
The swampy pools that it was compassed by.
They reared the city over those dead bones,
Calling it, after her who chose it first,
Mantua, and sought no other seer's response.
In it a denser populace was nursed
Before the folly of Casalodi outlawed
By Pinamonte's cunning was amerced.
Therefore I charge thee, if e'er thou hear abroad
Given to my city other origin,
Let false invention not the truth defraud. "
And I: " Master, thy affirmations win
Such certainty in me, that all else were
As a dead coal that once had kindled been.
But tell me of those that pass, if any appear
Of note, of whom thou knowest and canst speak;
For only of this my wish persists to hear. "
Then he answered: " He whose beard juts from his cheek
Over his dusky shoulders on each hand
Was, when in Greece the males were so to seek
That hardly for the cradles they remained,
An Augur: he with Calchas timed the blow
Which was to sever the first cable's strand.
Eurypylus his name: and somewhere so
Doth my high Tragedy tell the tale of him;
Thou know'st it well who dost the whole well know.
The other, who looks about the flanks so slim,
Was Michael Scot; and verily he knew
The circle of magic and its frauds to limn.
See Guy Bonatti, see Asdente, who
Would fain he had still attended to his cord
And leather, but too late the choice doth rue.
See the sad women, who the needle ignored,
The shuttle and spindle, and with effigy
And herb devised their sorceries abhorred.
But come, Cain and his thorns, as thou may'st see,
Occupies of each hemisphere the bound
Already, and beyond Seville meets the sea.
And even yester-eve the moon was round.
Thou must remember, for she harmed thee not
At any time in the deep wood's drear ground. "
Thus as he spoke, we moved on from that spot.