Inferno: Canto XXXIII

His mouth uplifting from the savage feast,
The sinner rubbed and wiped it free of gore
On the hair of the head he from behind laid waste;

And then began: 'Thou'dst have me wake once more
A desperate grief, of which to think alone,
Ere I have spoken, wrings me to the core.

But if my words shall be as seed that sown
May fructify unto the traitor's shame
Whom thus I gnaw, I mingle speech and groan.

Of how thou earnest hither or thy name
I nothing know, but that a Florentine
In very sooth thou art, thy words proclaim.

Thou then must know I was Count Ugolin,
The Archbishop Roger he. Now hearken well
Why I prove such a neighbour. How in fine,

And flowing from his ill designs, it fell
That I, confiding in his words, was caught
Then done to death, were waste of time to tell.

But that of which as yet thou heardest nought
Is how the death was cruel which I met:
Hearken and judge if wrong to me he wrought.

Scant window in the mew whose epithet
Of Famine came from me its resident,
And cooped in which shall many languish yet,

Had shown me through its slit how there were spent
Full many moons, ere that bad dream I dreamed
When of my future was the curtain rent.

Lord of the hunt and master this one seemed,
Chasing the wolf and wolf-cubs on the height
By which from Pisan eyes is Lucca hemmed.

With famished hounds well trained and swift of flight,
Lanfranchi and Gualandi in the van,
And Sismond he had set. Within my sight

Both sire and sons--nor long the chase--began
To grow (so seemed it) weary as they fled;
Then through their flanks fangs sharp and eager ran.

When I awoke before the morning spread
I heard my sons all weeping in their sleep--
For they were with me--and they asked for bread.

Ah! cruel if thou canst from pity keep
At the bare thought of what my heart foreknew;
And if thou weep'st not, what could make thee weep?

Now were they 'wake, and near the moment drew
At which 'twas used to bring us our repast;
But each was fearful lest his dream came true.

And then I heard the under gate made fast
Of the horrible tower, and thereupon I gazed
In my sons' faces, silent and aghast.

I did not weep, for I to stone was dazed:
They wept, and darling Anselm me besought:
"What ails thee, father? Wherefore thus amazed?"

And yet I did not weep, and answered not
The whole day, and that night made answer none,
Till on the world another sun shone out.

Soon as a feeble ray of light had won
Into our doleful prison, made aware
Of the four faces featured like my own,

Both of my hands I bit at in despair;
And they, imagining that I was fain
To eat, arose before me with the prayer:

"O father, 'twere for us an easier pain
If thou wouldst eat us. Thou didst us array
In this poor flesh: unclothe us now again."

I calmed me, not to swell their woe. That day
And the next day no single word we said.
Ah! pitiless earth, that didst unyawning stay!

When we had reached the fourth day, Gaddo, spread
Out at my feet, fell prone; and made demand:
"Why, O my father, offering us no aid?"

There died he. Plain as I before thee stand
I saw the three as one by one they failed,
The fifth day and the sixth; then with my hand,

Blind now, I groped for each of them, and wailed
On them for two days after they were gone.
Famine at last, more strong than grief, prevailed,'

When he had uttered this, his eyes all thrown
Awry, upon the hapless skull he fell
With teeth that, dog-like, rasped upon the bone.

Ah, Pisa! byword of the folk that dwell
In the sweet country where the Si doth sound,
Since slow thy neighbours to reward thee well

Let now Gorgona and Capraia mound
Themselves where Arno with the sea is blent,
Till every one within thy walls be drowned.

For though report of Ugolino went
That he betrayed thy castles, thou didst wrong
Thus cruelly his children to torment.

These were not guilty, for they were but young,
Thou modern Thebes! Brigata and young Hugh,
And the other twain of whom above 'tis sung.

We onward passed to where another crew
Of shades the thick-ribbed ice doth fettered keep;
Their heads not downward these, but backward threw.

Their very weeping will not let them weep,
And grief, encountering barriers at their eyes,
Swells, flowing inward, their affliction deep;

For the first tears that issue crystallise,
And fill, like vizor fashioned out of glass,
The hollow cup o'er which the eyebrows rise.

And though, as 'twere a callus, now my face
By reason of the frost was wholly grown
Benumbed and dead to feeling, I could trace

(So it appeared), a breeze against it blown,
And asked: 'O Master, whence comes this? So low
As where we are is any vapour known?'

And he replied: 'Thou ere long while shalt go
Where touching this thine eye shall answer true,
Discovering that which makes the wind to blow.'

Then from the cold crust one of that sad crew
Demanded loud: 'Spirits, for whom they hold
The inmost room, so truculent were you,

Back from my face let these hard veils be rolled,
That I may vent the woe which chokes my heart,
Ere tears again solidify with cold.'

And I to him: 'First tell me who thou art
If thou'dst have help; then if I help not quick
To the bottom of the ice let me depart.'

He answered: 'I am Friar Alberic--
He of the fruit grown in the orchard fell--
And here am I repaid with date for fig.'

'Ah!' said I to him, 'art thou dead as well?'
'How now my body fares,' he answered me,
'Up in the world, I have no skill to tell;

For Ptolomæa has this quality--
The soul oft plunges hither to its place
Ere it has been by Atropos set free.

And that more willingly from off my face
Thou mayst remove the glassy tears, know, soon
As ever any soul of man betrays

As I betrayed, the body once his own
A demon takes and governs until all
The span allotted for his life be run.

Into this tank headlong the soul doth fall;
And on the earth his body yet may show
Whose shade behind me wintry frosts enthral.

But thou canst tell, if newly come below:
It is Ser Branca d'Oria, and complete
Is many a year since he was fettered so.'

'It seems,' I answered, 'that thou wouldst me cheat,
For Branca d'Oria never can have died:
He sleeps, puts clothes on, swallows drink and meat.'

'Or e'er to the tenacious pitchy tide
Which boils in Malebranche's moat had come
The shade of Michael Zanche,' he replied,

'That soul had left a devil in its room
Within its body; of his kinsmen one
Treacherous with him experienced equal doom.

But stretch thy hand and be its work begun
Of setting free mine eyes.' This did not I.
Twas highest courtesy to yield him none.

Ah, Genoese, strange to morality!
Ye men infected with all sorts of sin!
Out of the world 'tis time that ye should die.

Here, to Romagna's blackest soul akin,
I chanced on one of you; for doing ill
His soul o'erwhelmed Cocytus' floods within,

Though in the flesh he seems surviving still.