Classic Poem

CANTO XXV

When he had made an end, the thief exclaimed,
Raising his hands with both the figs on high:
" Take thou them, God; at thee, at thee they are aimed. "
Thenceforth the serpents were no enemy
To me; for round his neck, as if it hissed
Thou speak'st no more! one coiled and clung thereby.
Another about his arms began to twist
And tighten, prisoning him in front so fast,
There was no wriggle in him that could resist.
Pistoia, ah Pistoia! thou shouldst blast
Thyself to a cinder and toll thine own death-knell,
For in evil thine old seed thou hast surpassed.
Through all the sombre corridors of hell
No spirit so insolent against God I found,
Not him ev'n who at Thebes from the wall fell.
He fled, and uttered not another sound.
And I beheld a Centaur full of storm
Come crying: " Where goes he now, that snarling hound? "
I think not that Maremma holds such swarm
Of snakes as clustered on his haunch and spread
Even to where begins our human form.
Over his shoulders and behind the head
Lay a dragon with extended wings aglow;
On all whom it encountered fire it shed.
" He is Cacus, " said my Master, " who below
The caverned steepness of Mount Aventine
Full often made a river of blood to flow.
He is trooped not with his brethren, by design,
Because by trickery he enticed to pen
The neighbouring great herd of stolen kine;
Wherefore his crooked works were ended then
By the club of Hercules, who dealt him nigh
A hundred blows, and had to endure not ten. "
While thus he spoke, the Centaur hasted by;
And under us on the path three spirits came near
Whom both I and my Guide failed to espy,
Till they called: " Who are ye? What do ye here? "
Our discourse therefore halted short; and all
Intent, to them alone did we give ear.
I knew them not; but so it did befall,
As often it befalleth by some hap,
That one had need the other's name to call,
Saying: " Where is Cianfa? What hath made him stop? "
Whereat I, that my Guide might give full heed,
From chin to nose my finger pointed up.
If thou art slow of faith, thou who dost read
What I shall tell, 'tis nothing for surprise,
Since half I doubt, I who witnessed it indeed.
While with brows raised I held them in mine eyes,
Lo, a serpent with six feet one sinner faced
And darting clamped its body entire on his.
With the middle feet his belly it embraced,
With the forefeet gript the arms and held them pent;
Then of both cheeks its fangs had the full taste.
With the hind feet stretcht along his thighs it leant,
And whipt its tail out in between the two
And upwards on the loins behind him bent.
Ivy upon a tree never in-grew
Close as that hideous creature, all up-reared,
To the other's body did its body glue.
Like heated wax the shapes of them were slurred
Together, and their mingling colours swam:
Nor this nor that was as it first appeared.
As runneth up before the burning flame
On paper, a brown colour, not yet black,
And the white dieth; such their hues became.
The other two gazed on him, and " Alack! "
Each cried, " O Agnel, how thou alterest!
Lo, neither two nor one shape dost thou make. "
The two heads were by now to one comprest,
When there before our eyes two forms begin
To mix in one where neither could be traced.
Two arms were made where the four bands had been;
The belly and chest and with the legs the thighs
Became such members as were never seen.
Each former aspect was annulled, and lo,
The unnatural image seemed neither and both,
And such with languid step we watched him go.
As a lizard in the Dog-star's days of wrath
Shunning from hedge to hedge the scorching flame
Flickers like lightning if it cross the path,
So swift on the other two, with angry aim
At the belly, a little viper all alight,
Livid, and black as a corn of pepper, came.
On one of them it pierced with sudden bite
That part in us whereby we first are fed,
Then, dropping down, lay stretched out opposite.
That pierced one stared on it but nothing said.
Nay, without motion of his feet he yawned
As if a sleep or fever on him weighed.
He eyed the snake, the snake him: from his wound
The one smoked fiercely, the other from its mouth;
Their smoke commingled in the air beyond.
Let Lucan tell no more the fate uncouth
Of poor Sabellus and Nasidius,
But stay and hear proclaimed a stranger truth;
Nor Ovid more Cadmus and Arethuse
Sing; if the one he fabled into a snake,
To a fountain the other, I envy not his Muse,
For never did he such transfusion make
As that both persons, front to front, should find
That each to itself could the other's substance take.
They mutually responded in such kind
That the snake split its tail into a fork,
And close the wounded one his feet combined.
The legs, and thighs with them, adhered so stark
Of their own will, that soon the eye would fail
The least division in their joins to mark.
That figure was assumed by the cleft tail
Which opposite had melted, and its skin
Grew soft, and the other hard with horny scale.
I saw the arms at the armpits enter in
And the two feet of the serpent, which were short,
Lengthen as much as those had shortened been.
The two hind-feet together as they contort
Combine into the member man conceals:
From his the wretch grew two feet of like sort,
The while the smoke with altered colour steals
Both in its veil, and on one side bestows
The hair that from the other side it peels.
The one fell prostrate and the other rose,
But not withdrew the lamps of wicked glow
Beneath which these forms were exchanged for those.
The erect one drew his face up toward his brow,
And from the too much matter that it gained
Out of the flat cheeks ears started to grow.
The flesh that slipt not back but there remained
Of its excess made rise a nose, and swell
The lips till a right thickness they attained.
The prostrate one shot out his muzzle an ell
And quite into his head drew back the ears
As a snail draws its horns into its shell.
The tongue, before entire, quick to converse
In speech, divides; and in the other head
The fork unites; the smoke now disappears.
The soul that had become a reptile fled
With hissing noise along the valley side,
And the other sputtered at it as it sped.
Toward it he turned then his new back, and cried
Aloud to the other: " I'll have Buoso crawl
Along the road where I was made to glide. "
Thus I beheld the seventh vermin all
Change and re-change; and here let the surprise
Be my excuse, if into fault I fall.
And though perplexity confused my eyes
And bruised my perfect understanding, flee
These did not ere that I could recognize
Lame Puccio as they stole away; and he
Of those three who came first alone had kept
His form from those malign mutations free.
The other was he for whom Gaville wept.