Classic Poem

CANTO XXX

What time revengeful Juno was inflamed
Through Semele against the Theban blood,
As otherwhiles like forfeit too she claimed,
Athamas fell to so insane a mood,
That seeing his wife go clasping in embrace
Of either arm her two sons, " In the wood
Spread we the nets, " he cried, " that lioness
And lion cubs may in the toils be found, "
Then stretching out his talons merciless
On the one who was named Learchus, whirled him round
In his strong grasp and on a boulder dashed;
And she herself with the other burden drowned.
Also when Fortune turning had abashed
The Trojans' towering spirit and so brought low
That king and kingdom down together crashed,
Miserable Hecuba, captive to her foe,
After that she had seen her daughter die,
And on the sea-banks by the ebb and flow
Anguished beheld her Polydorus lie,
Howled as a dog howls, stricken in the brain,
So much had sorrow wrenched her mind awry.
But never fury of Thebes or Troy had ta'en,
To goad wild beast, much less the heart of man,
A lodge in aught so cruel and insane
As two shades that I saw, naked and wan,
That like a famisht swine, after escape
Out of his sty, raging and biting ran.
The one seized on Capocchio by the nape,
Planting his tusks there, so that, dragging him,
It made the rugged ground his belly scrape.
The Aretine who remained, with every limb
Trembling, said to me: " Gianni Schicchi it is.
Thus harrying others goes he, goblin grim. "
" Oh, " said I: " so may the other spare to seize
And tear thee, ere it dart out of our sight,
Tell us who it is, if telling not displease. "
And he to me: " That is the ancient sprite
Of execrable Myrrha who to her sire
Bore love, but love which far exceeded right.
She came to sin with him in her desire,
Borrowing an alien form to hide her shame
As the other, going away there, did conspire,
That he the lady of the herd might claim,
Buoso Donati's person to assume,
Making a will conforming to the name. "
And when the raging two were past on whom
Mine eyes had been so fixt, they made pursuit
Of the other spirits born to evil doom.
And I beheld one shapen like a lute
If he had only had his groin below
Lopt from the rest, where man's fork hath its root.
The dropsy's weight which disproportioned so
The limbs with humours ill-absorbed within
That with the paunch the visage doth not go.
Held his lips open in the parching skin
Even as 'tis with the hectic, who for thirst
Curls the one lip up and the other toward his chin.
" O ye who are not anywise amerced,
I know not why, in this world without hope, "
Said he to us, " that ye may hearken first
To the misery of Master Adam, stop.
Alive I had all my wishes: now, alas!
I crave for water, for one little drop.
The mountain brooks that sparkle through the grass
Flowing down to Arno from the Casentin
And freshening all the soft earth where they pass
For ever are in my sight; nor only seen;
For the image of them parcheth more than this
Disease that wastes the face where flesh hath been.
The unbending Justice which doth me chastise
Finds in the place where into sin I strayed
Cause to make keener and more swift my sighs.
There is Romena, where false mint I made
Of the good coin, stamped with the Baptist bright,
For which the burning of my body paid.
But saw I here the wretched Guido's sprite
Or Alessandro's or their brother's, I'd
For Branda's fount not sacrifice the sight.
One is in already, if they have not lied
Who go around pricked by their frenzy's goad;
But what avails it me whose limbs are tied?
Were I but now so nimble that this load
I could an inch in a hundred years drag out
I had set myself already upon the road
To seek for him through this misshapen rout,
Though half a mile and more it is across
And though eleven miles it winds about.
Through them I am of the household of this fosse;
By their persuasion I the florins struck
That had three carats' weight in them of dross. "
And I to him: " Who are the two sad folk
Who, at thy right and close on thy domain,
Like a hand plunged in icy water smoke? "
" Here were they when I dropt into this drain, "
He answered, " and since then they have not stirred,
And, I think, never may they stir again.
The one is she who Joseph falsely slurred;
Troy's false Greek, Sinon, is the other; and hot
In the foul fumes of fever are they blurred. "
And one who of his speech took angry note,
Perhaps because named with such evil scum,
Upon the rigid belly of him smote.
It sounded like the beat of a great drum.
And Master Adam smote him in the face,
With arm that seemed to hit as firm and plumb,
Saying to him: " Though from this cursed place
My heaviness disableth me to go,
Yet have I still an arm free for such case. "
Whereat the other: " When thou wast going to
The fire, thou hadst it not so ready there,
But ready and more when coining was to do. "
And he of the dropsy: " Truth of that affair
Thou hast; but when they questioned thee in Troy
Such witness of the truth thou didst not bear. "
" If I spoke false, thou too didst falsify
The coins, " said Sinon. " For one crime I am here,
But thou for more than all the devil's fry. "
" Bethink thee of the horse, thou perjurer, "
Replied the swollen paunch, " and be thine aches
Sharper, that of it all the world's aware. "
" Sharper to thee be now the thirst that cracks
Thy tongue, and the foul rheum, " the Greek replied,
" That of thy belly such a blind hedge makes. "
The coiner then: " As ever, thy jaw gapes wide
To speak ill; for it thirst is in my veins
And water stuffs me out from side to side,
Thou hast the burning and the head that pains;
And little prompting wouldst thou need to lap
The mirror of Narcissus to the drains. "
All ear, I listened to their snarl and snap,
When spoke the Master: " A little longer look,
And 'twixt us erelong shall a quarrel hap. "
And when I heard the wrath in his rebuke,
I turned, and such shame through my bosom shot
That even now it shakes me as then it shook.
As a man dreams of hurt that he has got
And dreaming wishes that it were a dream,
Yearning for that which is, as if 'twere not,
Such, with no power of utterance, did I seem,
Who wished to excuse myself and did excuse
Even then, and that I had done it could not deem.
" Less shame the folly of greater fault undoes
Than thou hast now committed, " said my Guide.
" Let thy heart therefore all its sorrow lose.
Consider that I am always at thy side,
Should fortune bring thee to some other place
Where with like tongues men wrangle and deride.
The wish to hear them is a wish that's base. "