Classic Poem

CANTO XXIX

The many people and diverse wounds had made
The eyes of me so drunk, that they were faint
To tarry, and to weep out what on them weighed.
But Virgil said: " Why gazest still intent?
Why on the maimed unhappy shades below
Still lingering is thy vision wholly bent?
Thou hast not at the other chasms done so.
Consider, if all the tale thou wouldst complete,
This circle two and twenty miles doth go;
The Moon already is underneath our feet,
And near its end the time permitted draws,
And more is yet to see than here we meet. "
" Had'st thou, " I then replied, " marked but the cause
Which made my eyes go questing with my mind,
Perhaps thou wouldst have suffered me to pause. "
Meantime the Guide was going, and I behind
Moved in his steps, now making my reply
And adding: " There within the cavern blind
Whereon I kept so fixt a scrutiny
I think a spirit of my own blood doth plain
The guilt which in the deeps there costs so high. "
Then said the Master: " Tease thou not in vain
Thy thought with him, nor trouble thyself at all.
Turn to other things, and let him there remain.
For him I saw beneath the bridge's wall
Point, threatening thee out of his angry heart;
Geri del Bello's name I heard them call.
So all concentred upon him thou wert
Who once held Hautefort, thou wouldst not thy head
Turn to the other; and so did he depart. "
" O my dear Guide, his violent death, " I said,
" Which hath not yet found vengeance or redress
From any who share dishonour with the dead,
Made him indignant; therefore, as I guess,
He went with no word spoken from my sight;
And the more pity is in my heart's distress. "
Thus talking, we won vantage of the height
Where first the ridge the other valley shows
Down to the bottom, if but there were more light.
When we above the final cloister rose
Of Malebolge, so that its diverse
Lay-brethren and their state it could disclose,
A volley of lamentations sent their spears
Through me, so barbed with pity's smarting prick
That with my hands I covered both my ears.
Pain such as if from lazarets the sick
In feverish August from Chiana's fen,
And from Maremma and Sardinia, thick
Were heaped together in a single pen
With all their sores, was here: and all so stank
As when they fester do the wounds of men.
Now we descended over the last bank
Of the long ridge, and still were moving toward
The left; and now my vision deeper sank
Where Justice of the infallible award,
Ministress of the great Sire, punisheth
The falsifiers whom her scrolls record.
I think that sorrow drew no sharper breath
To see Aegina's people all infirm
When the air so pregnant was with subtle death
That the animals all, even the little worm,
Dropt dying, and afterwards the ancient folk,
As poets for a certainty affirm,
From seed of ants reanimated woke,
Than here it drew to see that valley black
With huddle of spirits heaped in languor choke.
This on the belly and that upon the back
Of the other lay, and some were shifting round
At crawling pace along the dismal track.
Step by step went we without speech or sound
Looking and listening to the sick, who drooped
Helpless to raise their bodies from the ground.
I saw two sit who one another propt,
As pan is propt on pan for the warmth's sake,
From head to foot bespotted and corrupt.
Ne'er saw I curry-comb more frenzy take
From hand of groom for whom his master waits
Or one who is kept unwillingly awake,
Than here did the anguished clawing upon pates
And bodies, as each plied the nail to appease
The fury of the itch that nothing yet abates.
Those fevered nails the scabby leprosies
Scraped as a knife the scales of carp or bream
Or what fish hath them larger yet than these.
" O thou who with thy fingers dost unseam
Thy skin, and usest them at whiles in lieu
Of pincers, " spoke my Guide to one of them,
" Tell us if any Latian be with you
Who are here within, so may thy nails be hard
Eternally to avail for what they do. "
" Latians are we whom here thou seest so marred,
Both of us, " the one answered, making moan,
" But who art thou who hast of us regard? "
And the Guide: " I am one who, zone by zone,
Descend, and this man living with me take
Until all Hell be to his vision shown. "
Then did the mutual prop suddenly break,
And toward me each turned trembling, with the rest
Who heard the echo at his voice awake.
To me the Master all his gaze addressed,
Saying: " Tell whatever thou art so inclined, "
And I began, obeying his behest,
" So may your memory out of human mind
There in the first world, not for ever fade
But under many suns a life yet find,
Tell me who ye are, and of what breed ye are made,
Nor let your penance, loathly and foul howe'er
It be, of that disclosure make you afraid. "
" I am of Arezzo, " the one answered clear,
" And Albero of Siena had me burned;
But what I died for hath not brought me here.
In jest, 'tis true, I said to him, " I have learned
To lift myself in the air and earth to skim";
BuThe, who dreamed fond dreams nor much discerned.
Willed I should show him the art, and for that whim,
Because I made him not a Daedalus,
He had me burned by one who had fathered him.
But for the alchemy I loved to use
On earth, to this last pocket of the ten
Minos, who may not err, condemns me thus. "
And I to the Poet: " Now did ever men
People as vain as the Sienese record?
Truly the French are not by far so vain. "
Whereat the other leper, who caught my word,
Answered to me: " Except me Stricca, who
Contrived to spend so modestly his hoard,
And Niccolo who made invention new
Of that so costly usage of the clove
Found in the garden where the like seed grew.
Except me too the company where strove
Caccia of Ascian to lose wood and vine,
And by his wit the Abbagliato throve.
But that thou may'st know whose vote seconds thine
Against the Sienese, sharpen thy sight
So that my face may be for thee a sign.
So shalt thou know Capocchio's shade, whose might
Of alchemy to metals gave false shape,
And thou'lt remember, if I scan thee right,
How I of Nature was so good an ape. "