Inferno: Canto XX

Now of new torments must my verses tell,
Which to the twentieth canto subject lent
Of this first poem of those plunged in Hell;

Already was I gazing, all intent.
To look all down the pit that open lay,
All bathed in tears of anguish and lament.

Through the round vale I saw a people stray.
Silent and weeping, and with solemn pace,
Like litany processions, wend their way.

And as my glance went farther down in space,
Each seemed to me distorted wondrously
From the chest upwards even to the face;

For to the reins each looked with back-turned eye.
And could not help but he must backward go,
For none what lay before him could espy.

It may be that by palsy's withering blow
Some have been turned in fashion as I saw;
But I ne'er knew, nor deem it can be so.

If God shall grant thee, Reader dear, to draw
Due fruit from what thou readest, think how I
Could dry-eyed look upon that doom of awe.

When this our human shape I saw come nigh,
So twisted that the tears their eyes did weep
Fell down the spine, nor left the haunches dry.

Certes I wept, and leant against the steep
Of the hard rock, so that to me my Guide
Said, "Art thou still as those whose wit doth sleep?

Here piety lives when pity's self hath died.
Who is more sunk in wickedness than he
Whom, from God's judgment, passion turns aside?

Lift up thy head, lift up; yon sufferer see,
For whom earth in the Thebans' sight oped wide;
Wherefore all cried, ' Ah! whither dost thou flee,

Amphiaraos? Why from war dost hide?'
He, till he reached the bottom, never stayed,
Where Minos sits, by whom each soul is tried.

See for a breast he has his shoulders made;
For since he sought to see too far before,
He looks behind, and walks with backward tread.

See, too, Tiresias, who changed semblance bore,
When he, from male, a female form did gain,
And every limb in altered fashion wore;

And he had need to strike the serpents twain
With that his rod, when they were all entwined.
Ere he man's special plumes could wear again.

To his paunch Aruns turns his parts behind.
Who in the hills of Luni, where they plough
Who 'neath Carrara's rocks their dwelling find,

Had a wide cave within the white rock's brow,
And in it dwelt, nor failed him then the sight.
Of stars of heaven and great sea's waves below.

And she who hides her bosom from the light
With tresses loose, so that thou see'st no more,
Who on that side with hair is covered quite,

Manto she is, who many a land roamed o'er,
And came at last to rest where I was born:
Wherefore I wish that thou shouldst hear my lore.

After her father's life was spent and worn.
And Bacchus' city tasted slavery.
Long time she wandered through the world forlorn.

A lake there is in our fair Italy
At the Alp's foot that shuts Lamagna in,
Benaco, where the Tyrol low doth lie.

By thousand streams and more the Apennine,
I trow, is bathed, which in the lake are pent"
Camonica and Garda's bounds within;

A place there is midway where he of Trent
Chief Shepherd, and Verona's, Brescia's too,
Might each give blessing if that way he went;

There Peschiera's fortress, bulwark true
To face the strength of them of Bergamo
And Brescia, where a lower shore we view;

There needs must be that all the waters go,
Which fair Benaco's bosom fails to hold,
And through green pastures like a river flow.

Soon as the current leaves its channel old.
No more Benaco, Mincio is it styled.
Till at Governo with the Po 'tis rolled;

Nor far it runs before a low waste wild'
It finds, and spreads into a marshy lake,
And taints the summer with its mists defiled.

There saw the ruthless maid, as she did take
Her way, a field where never passed the share,
In the mid-marsh, where none their home did make;

There, that her life apart from men might fare,
She with her servants lived to work her art.
And left untenanted her carcase there.

Then men who, scattered round, had dwelt apart
Were gathered to that place, defended well
By the wide swamp that girt its every part,

O'er her dead bones they reared their citadel,
And, for her sake who first did choose the place.
As fittest name, their choice on Mantua fell.

Of old they were a far more crowded race,
Ere Casalodi's blindness had received
From Pinamonte's fraud such sore disgrace;

Therefore I warn thee, lest thou be deceived.
If otherwise my city's birth be told
For truth let no such falsehood be believed."

And I: " O Master, of such worth I hold
Those words of thine, and so my faith they gain,
All else to me were but as embers cold.

But of the tribe that passes, tell me plain
If thou see'st any worthy special note;
Only for that would I attention strain."

Said he to me, " See him who from his throat
Lets fall his beard upon his shoulders swarth;
When Greece of old sent all her males afloat,

And empty cradles mourned their children's dearth,
He was an augur, and with Calchas told,"
In Aulis, when the first rope should leave earth —

Eurypylus his name; and so of old
My lofty drama sings in certain place;
Thou know'st it well, whose mind the whole doth hold

That other there, whose ribs fill scanty space,"
Was Michael Scott, who truly full well knew
Of magical deceits the illusive grace.

Guido Bonatti, yea, Asdente too
Thou see'st, who now would fain the thong and thread
Have plied — too late he doth his folly rue.

Those wretched ones thou see'st, who needle fled,
And spool and spindle, witches to become.
With herbs and idols their profane art sped.

But now come on, for hastens to his home
Cain with his thorns, where meet each hemisphere,
And by Seviglia dips in ocean's foam.

And lo I last night the moon did round appear;
Well shouldst thou mind it, for it served not ill
Ofttimes thy wanderings through the forest drear."

So spake he to me, and we went on still.