Inferno: Canto XXVI

Joy, Florence, since thou art so great that over land and sea thou beatest thy wings, and thy name through Hell expands itself!

Among the thieves I found five such, thy citizens; whereat shame comes on me, and thou to great honour mountest not thereby.

But if the truth is dreamed of near the morning, thou shalt feel ere long what Prato, not to speak of others, craves for thee.

And if it were already come, it would not be too early; so were it! since indeed it must be: for it will weigh the heavier on me as I grow older.

We departed thence; and, by the stairs which the curbstones had [made for] us to descend before, my Guide remounted and drew me up;

and pursuing our solitary way among the jaggs and branches of the cliff, the foot without the hand sped not.

I sorrowed then, and sorrow now again when I direct my memory to what I saw; and curb my genius more than I am wont, lest it run where Virtue guides it not; so that,

if kindly star or something better have given to me the good, I may not grudge myself that gift.

As many fireflies as the peasant who is resting on the hill—at the time that he who lights the world least hides his face from us,

when the fly yields to the gnat—sees down along the valley, there perchance where he gathers grapes and tills:

with flames thus numerous the eighth chasm was all gleaming, as I perceived, so soon as I came to where the bottom shewed itself.

And as he, who was avenged by the bears, saw Elijah’s chariot at its departure, when the horses rose erect to heaven,—

for he could not so follow it with his eyes as to see other than the flame alone, like a little cloud, ascending up:

thus moved each of those flames along the gullet of the foss, for none of them shews the theft, and every flame steals a sinner.

I stood upon the bridge, having risen so to look, that, if I had not caught a rock, I should have fallen down without being pushed.

And the Guide, who saw me thus attent, said: “Within those fires are the spirits; each swathes himself with that which burns him.”

“Master,” I replied, “from hearing thee I feel more certain; but had already discerned it to be so, and already wished to say to thee:

Who is in that fire, which comes so parted at the top, as if it rose from the pyre where Eteocles with his brother was placed?”

He answered me: “Within it there Ulysses is tortured, and Diomed; and thus they run together in punishment, as erst in wrath;

and in their flame they groan for the ambush of the horse, that made the door by which the noble seed of the Romans came forth;

within it they lament the artifice, whereby Deidamia in death still sorrows for Achilles; and there for the Palladium they suffer punishment.”

“If they within those sparks can speak,” said I, “Master! I pray thee much, and repray that my prayer may equal a thousand,

deny me not to wait until the horned flame comes hither; thou seest how with desire I bend me towards it.”

And he to me: “Thy request is worthy of much praise, and therefore I accept it; but do thou refrain thy tongue.

Let me speak: for I have conceived what thou wishest; and they, perhaps, because they were Greeks, might disdain thy words.”

After the flame had come where time and place seemed fitting to my Guide, I heard him speak in this manner:

“O ye, two in one fire! if I merited of you whilst I lived, if I merited of you much or the little,

when on earth I wrote the High Verses, move ye not; but let the one of you tell where he, having lost himself, went to die.”

The greater horn of the ancient flame began to shake itself, murmuring, just like a flame that struggles with the wind.

Then carrying to and fro the top, as if it were the tongue that spake, threw forth a voice, and said: “When

I departed from Circe, who beyond a year detained me there near Gaeta, ere Æneas thus had named it,

neither fondness for my son, nor reverence for my aged father, nor the due love that should have cheered Penelope,

could conquer in me the ardour that I had to gain experience of the world, and of human vice and worth;

I put forth on the deep open sea, with but one ship, and with that small company, which had not deserted me.

Both the shores I saw as far as Spain, far as Morocco; and saw Sardinia and the other isles which that sea bathes round.

I and my companions were old and tardy, when we came to that narrow pass, where Hercules assigned his landmarks

to hinder man from venturing farther; on the right hand, I left Seville; on the other, had already left Ceuta.

‘O brothers!’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West, deny not, to this the brief vigil

of your senses that remains, experience of the unpeopled world behind the Sun.

Consider your origin: ye were not formed to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.’

With this brief speech I made my companions so eager for the voyage, that I could hardly then have checked them;

and, turning the poop towards morning, we of our oars made wings for the foolish flight, always gaining on the left.

Night already saw the other pole, with all its stars; and ours so low, that it rose not from the ocean floor.

Five times the light beneath the Moon had been rekindled and quenched as oft, since we had entered on the arduous passage,

when there appeared to us a Mountain, dim with distance; and to me it seemed the highest I had ever seen.

We joyed, and soon our joy was turned to grief: for a tempest rose from the new land, and struck the forepart of our ship.

Three times it made her whirl round with all the waters; at the fourth, made the poop rise up and prow go down, as pleased Another, till the sea was closed above us.”