Inferno: Canto XXXIV

'Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni
Towards where we are; seek then with vision keen,'
My Master bade, 'if trace of him thou spy.'

As, when the exhalations dense have been,
Or when our hemisphere grows dark with night,
A windmill from afar is sometimes seen,

I seemed to catch of such a structure sight;
And then to 'scape the blast did backward draw
Behind my Guide--sole shelter in my plight.

Now was I where (I versify with awe)
The shades were wholly covered, and did show
Visible as in glass are bits of straw.

Some stood upright and some were lying low,
Some with head topmost, others with their feet;
And some with face to feet bent like a bow.

But we kept going on till it seemed meet
Unto my Master that I should behold
The creature once of countenance so sweet.

He stepped aside and stopped me as he told:
'Lo, Dis! And lo, we are arrived at last
Where thou must nerve thee and must make thee bold,'

How I hereon stood shivering and aghast,
Demand not, Reader; this I cannot write;
So much the fact all reach of words surpassed.

I was not dead, yet living was not quite:
Think for thyself, if gifted with the power,
What, life and death denied me, was my plight.

Of that tormented realm the Emperor
Out of the ice stood free to middle breast;
And me a giant less would overtower

Than would his arm a giant. By such test
Judge then what bulk the whole of him must show,
Of true proportion with such limb possessed.

If he was fair of old as hideous now,
And yet his brows against his Maker raised,
Meetly from him doth all affliction flow.

O how it made me horribly amazed
When on his head I saw three faces grew!
The one vermilion which straight forward gazed;

And joining on to it were other two,
One rising up from either shoulder-bone,
Till to a junction on the crest they drew.

'Twixt white and yellow seemed the right-hand one;
The left resembled them whose country lies
Where valleywards the floods of Nile flow down.

Beneath each face two mighty wings did rise,
Such as this bird tremendous might demand:
Sails of sea-ships ne'er saw I of such size.

Not feathered were they, but in style were planned
Like a bat's wing: by them a threefold breeze--
For still he flapped them--evermore was fanned,

And through its depths Cocytus caused to freeze.
Down three chins tears for ever made descent
From his six eyes; and red foam mixed with these.

In every mouth there was a sinner rent
By teeth that shred him as a heckle would;
Thus three at once compelled he to lament.

To the one in front 'twas little to be chewed
Compared with being clawed and clawed again,
Till his back-bone of skin was sometimes nude.

'The soul up yonder in the greater pain
Is Judas 'Scariot, with his head among
The teeth,' my Master said, 'while outward strain

His legs. Of the two whose heads are downward hung,
Brutus is from the black jowl pendulous:
See how he writhes, yet never wags his tongue.

The other, great of thew, is Cassius:
But night is rising and we must be gone;
For everything hath now been seen by us.'

Then, as he bade, I to his neck held on
While he the time and place of vantage chose;
And when the wings enough were open thrown

He grasped the shaggy ribs and clutched them close,
And so from tuft to tuft he downward went
Between the tangled hair and crust which froze.

We to the bulging haunch had made descent,
To where the hip-joint lies in it; and then
My Guide, with painful twist and violent,

Turned round his head to where his feet had been,
And like a climber closely clutched the hair:
I thought to Hell that we returned again.

'Hold fast to me; it needs by such a stair,'
Panting, my Leader said, like man foredone,
'That we from all that wretchedness repair.'

Right through a hole in a rock when he had won,
The edge of it he gave me for a seat
And deftly then to join me clambered on.

I raised mine eyes, expecting they would meet
With Lucifer as I beheld him last,
But saw instead his upturned legs and feet.

If in perplexity I then was cast,
Let ignorant people think who do not see
What point it was that I had lately passed.

'Rise to thy feet,' my Master said to me;
'The way is long and rugged the ascent,
And at mid tierce the sun must almost be.'

'Twas not as if on palace floors we went:
A dungeon fresh from nature's hand was this;
Rough underfoot, and of light indigent.

'Or ever I escape from the abyss,
O Master,' said I, standing now upright,
'Correct in few words where I think amiss.

Where lies the ice? How hold we him in sight
Set upside down? The sun, how had it skill
In so short while to pass to morn from night?'

And he: 'In fancy thou art standing, still,
On yon side of the centre, where I caught
The vile worm's hair which through the world doth drill.

There wast thou while our downward course I wrought;
But when I turned, the centre was passed by
Which by all weights from every point is sought.

And now thou standest 'neath the other sky,
Opposed to that which vaults the great dry ground
And 'neath whose summit there did whilom die

The Man whose birth and life were sinless found.
Thy feet are firm upon the little sphere,
On this side answering to Judecca's round.

'Tis evening yonder when 'tis morning here;
And he whose tufts our ladder rungs supplied.
Fixed as he was continues to appear.

Headlong from Heaven he fell upon this side;
Whereon the land, protuberant here before,
For fear of him did in the ocean hide,

And 'neath our sky emerged: land, as of yore
Still on this side, perhaps that it might shun
His fall, heaved up, and filled this depth no more.'

From Belzebub still widening up and on,
Far-stretching as the sepulchre, extends
A region not beheld, but only known

By murmur of a brook which through it wends,
Declining by a channel eaten through
The flinty rock; and gently it descends.

My Guide and I, our journey to pursue
To the bright world, upon this road concealed
Made entrance, and no thought of resting knew.

He first, I second, still ascending held
Our way until the fair celestial train
Was through an opening round to me revealed:

And, issuing thence, we saw the stars again.