The Divine Comedy (Illustrated Edition). Dante Alighieri

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The Divine Comedy (Illustrated Edition) - Dante Alighieri


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Nessus spake: “Return, and be their guide.

      And if ye chance to cross another troop,

      Command them keep aloof.” Onward we mov’d,

      The faithful escort by our side, along

      The border of the crimson-seething flood,

      Whence from those steep’d within loud shrieks arose.

      Some there I mark’d, as high as to their brow

      Immers’d, of whom the mighty Centaur thus:

      “These are the souls of tyrants, who were given

      To blood and rapine. Here they wail aloud

      Their merciless wrongs. Here Alexander dwells,

      And Dionysius fell, who many a year

      Of woe wrought for fair Sicily. That brow

      Whereon the hair so jetty clust’ring hangs,

      By his foul step-son.” To the bard rever’d

      I turned me round, and thus he spake; “Let him

      Be to thee now first leader, me but next

      To him in rank.” Then farther on a space

      The Centaur paus’d, near some, who at the throat

      Were extant from the wave; and showing us

      A spirit by itself apart retir’d,

      Which yet is honour’d on the bank of Thames.”

      A race I next espied, who held the head,

      And even all the bust above the stream.

      ’Midst these I many a face remember’d well.

      Thus shallow more and more the blood became,

      So that at last it but imbru’d the feet;

      And there our passage lay athwart the foss.

      “As ever on this side the boiling wave

      Thou seest diminishing,” the Centaur said,

      “So on the other, be thou well assur’d,

      It lower still and lower sinks its bed,

      Till in that part it reuniting join,

      Where ’t is the lot of tyranny to mourn.

      There Heav’n’s stern justice lays chastising hand

      On Attila, who was the scourge of earth,

      Tears ever by the seething flood unlock’d

      From the Rinieri, of Corneto this,

      With violence and war.” This said, he turn’d,

      And quitting us, alone repass’d the ford.

      Footnotes

      Canto XIII

       Table of Contents

      ARGUMENT.—Still in the seventh circle, Dante enters its second compartment, which contains both those who have done violence on their own persons and those who have violently consumed their goods; the first changed into rough and knotted trees whereon the harpies build their nests, the latter chased and torn by black female mastiffs. Among the former, Piero delle Vigne is one who tells him the cause of his having committed suicide, and moreover in what manner the souls are transformed into those trunks. Of the


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