Inferno: Canto XXVI

Rejoice, O Florence, in thy widening fame!
Thy wings thou beatest over land and sea,
And even through Inferno spreads thy name.

Burghers of thine, five such were found by me
Among the thieves; whence I ashamed grew,
Nor shall great glory thence redound to thee.

But if 'tis toward the morning dreams are true,
Thou shalt experience ere long time be gone
The doom even Prato prays for as thy due.

And came it now, it would not come too soon.
Would it were come as come it must with time:
'Twill crush me more the older I am grown.

Departing thence, my Guide began to climb
The jutting rocks by which we made descent
Some while ago, and pulled me after him.

And as upon our lonely way we went
'Mong splinters of the cliff, the feet in vain,
Without the hand to help, had labour spent.

I sorrowed, and am sorrow-smit again,
Recalling what before mine eyes there lay,
And, more than I am wont, my genius rein

From running save where virtue leads the way;
So that if happy star or holier might
Have gifted me I never mourn it may.

At time of year when he who gives earth light
His face shows to us longest visible,
When gnats replace the fly at fall of night,

Not by the peasant resting on the hill
Are seen more fire-flies in the vale below,
Where he perchance doth field and vineyard till,

Than flamelets I beheld resplendent glow
Throughout the whole Eighth Bolgia, when at last
I stood whence I the bottom plain could know.

And as he whom the bears avenged, when passed
From the earth Elijah, saw the chariot rise
With horses heavenward reared and mounting fast,

And no long time had traced it with his eyes
Till but a flash of light it all became,
Which like a rack of cloud swept to the skies:

Deep in the valley's gorge, in mode the same,
These flitted; what it held by none was shown,
And yet a sinner lurked in every flame.

To see them well I from the bridge peered down,
And if a jutting crag I had not caught
I must have fallen, though neither thrust nor thrown.

My Leader me beholding lost in thought:
'In all the fires are spirits,' said to me;
'His flame round each is for a garment wrought.'

'O Master!' I replied, 'by hearing thee
I grow assured, but yet I knew before
That thus indeed it was, and longed to be

Told who is in the flame which there doth soar,
Cloven, as if ascending from the pyre
Where with Eteocles there burned of yore

His brother.' He: 'Ulysses in that fire
And Diomedes burn; in punishment
Thus held together, as they held in ire.

And, wrapped within their flame, they now repent
The ambush of the horse, which oped the door
Through which the Romans' noble seed forth went.

For guile Deïdamia makes deplore
In death her lost Achilles, tears they shed,
And bear for the Palladium vengeance sore.'

'Master, I pray thee fervently,' I said,
'If from those flames they still can utter speech--
Give ear as if a thousand times I pled!

Refuse not here to linger, I beseech,
Until the cloven fire shall hither gain:
Thou seest how toward it eagerly I reach.'

And he: 'Thy prayers are worthy to obtain
Exceeding praise; thou hast what thou dost seek:
But see that thou from speech thy tongue refrain.

I know what thou wouldst have; leave me to speak,
For they perchance would hear contemptuously
Shouldst thou address them, seeing they were Greek.'

Soon as the flame toward us had come so nigh
That to my Leader time and place seemed met,
I heard him thus adjure it to reply:

'O ye who twain within one fire are set,
If what I did your guerdon meriteth,
If much or little ye are in my debt

For the great verse I built while I had breath,
By one of you be openly confessed
Where, lost to men, at last he met with death.'

Of the ancient flame the more conspicuous crest
Murmuring began to waver up and down
Like flame that flickers, by the wind distressed.

At length by it was measured motion shown,
Like tongue that moves in speech; and by the flame
Was language uttered thus: 'When I had gone

From Circe who a long year kept me tame
Beside her, ere the near Gaeta had
Receivèd from Æneas that new name;

No softness for my son, nor reverence sad
For my old father, nor the love I owed
Penelope with which to make her glad,

Could quench the ardour that within me glowed
A full experience of the world to gain--
Of human vice and worth. But I abroad

Launched out upon the high and open main
With but one bark and but the little band
Which ne'er deserted me. As far as Spain

I saw the sea-shore upon either hand,
And as Morocco; saw Sardinia's isle,
And all of which those waters wash the strand.

I and my comrades were grown old the while
And sluggish, ere we to the narrows came
Where Hercules of old did landmarks pile

For sign to men they should no further aim;
And Seville lay behind me on the right,
As on the left lay Ceuta. Then to them

I spake: "O Brothers, who through such a fight
Of hundred thousand dangers West have won,
In this short watch that ushers in the night

Of all your senses, ere your day be done,
Refuse not to obtain experience new
Of worlds unpeopled, yonder, past the sun.

Consider whence the seed of life ye drew;
Ye were not born to live like brutish herd,
But righteousness and wisdom to ensue."

My comrades to such eagerness were stirred
By this short speech the course to enter on,
They had no longer brooked restraining word.

Turning our poop to where the morning shone
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,
Still tending left the further we had gone.

And of the other pole I saw at night
Now all the stars; and 'neath the watery plain
Our own familiar heavens were lost to sight.

Five times afresh had kindled, and again
The moon's face earthward was illumed no more,
Since out we sailed upon the mighty main;

Then we beheld a lofty mountain soar,
Dim in the distance; higher, as I thought,
By far than any I had seen before.

We joyed; but with despair were soon distraught
When burst a whirlwind from the new-found world
And the forequarter of the vessel caught.

With all the waters thrice it round was swirled;
At the fourth time the poop, heaved upward, rose,
The prow, as pleased Another, down was hurled;

And then above us did the ocean close.'