Purgatorio: Canto XI

“O our Father who art in heaven, not circumscribed, but through the greater love thou hast for thy first works on high,

praised be thy name and thy worth by every creature, as ’tis meet to give thanks to thy sweet effluence.

May the peace of thy kingdom come upon us, for we cannot of ourselves attain to it with all our wit, if it come not.

As of their will thine angels make sacrifice to thee, singing Hosanna, so may men make of theirs.

Give us this day our daily manna, without which he backward goes through this rough desert, who most toileth to advance.

And as we forgive every one the evil we have suffered, do thou forgive in loving-kindness and regard not our desert.

Put not our virtue, which lightly is subdued, to trial with the old adversary, but deliver us from him who so pricks it.

This last prayer, dear Lord, is not made for us, for need is not, but for those who have remained behind us.”

Thus those shades, praying good speed for them and for us, were going under their burden, like that whereof we sometimes dream,

unequal all in anguish around and weary, along the first cornice, purging away the foul mists of the world.

If there ever a good word for us is said, what can be said and done for them here, by those who have their will rooted in good?

Truly we ought to help them to wash away their stains, which they have borne hence, so that pure and light they may go forth to the starry spheres.

“Pray!—so may justice and pity soon unload you, that ye may spread the wing which may uplift you according to your desire,—

show us on which hand we go quickest towards the stairway; and if more than one passage there be, tell us that which least steeply ascends;

for he who cometh with me, because of the weight of Adam’s flesh wherewith he is clad, at climbing up is slow against his will.”

From whom came the words which were returned to those which he whom I was following had said, was not manifest,

but it was said: “To the right hand along the bank come with us, and ye shall find the pass possible for a living person to ascend.

And if I were not impeded by the stone which subdues my proud neck, wherefore needs must I carry my visage low,

him who is yet alive, and names not himself, would I look at, to see if I know him, and to make him pitiful to this burden.

I was Italian and son of a great Tuscan: Guglielmo Aldobrandesco was my father; I know not if his name was ever with you.

The ancient blood and gallant deeds of my ancestors made me so insolent that, thinking not of our common mother,

all men I held in such exceeding scorn that it was the death of me, as the Sienese know, and every child knows in Campagnatico.

I am Humbert; and not to me alone pride works ill, for all my fellows hath it dragged with it to mishap.

And here must I therefore bear this load among the dead, until God be satisfied, since I did it not among the living.”

Listening I bent down my face; and one of them, not he who was speaking, twisted himself beneath the weight which encumbers him;

and saw me and knew me and was calling out, keeping his eyes with difficulty fixed upon me, who all bent was going with them.

“Oh,” said I to him, “art thou not Oderisi, the honour of Gubbio, and the honour of that art which in Paris is called ‘illuminating’?”

“Brother,” said he, “more pleasing are the leaves which Franco Bolognese paints; the honour now is all his and mine in part.

Truly I should not have been so courteous while I lived, because of the great desire of excelling whereon my heart was bent.

For such pride here the fine is paid; and I should not yet be here, were it not that having power to sin, I turned me to God.

O empty glory of human powers! How short the time its green endures upon the top, if it be not overtaken by rude ages!

Cimabue thought to hold the field in painting, and now Giotto hath the cry, so that the fame of the other is obscured.

Even so one Guido hath taken from the other the glory of our tongue; and perchance one is born who shall chase both from the nest.

Earthly fame is naught but a breath of wind, which now cometh hence and now thence, and changes name because it changes direction.

What greater fame shalt thou have, if thou strip thee of thy flesh when old, than if thou hadst died ere thou wert done with pap and chink,

before a thousand years are passed? which is shorter space to eternity than the twinkling of an eye to the circle which slowest is turned in heaven.

All Tuscany rang with the sound of him who moves so slowly along the way in front of me, and now hardly is a whisper of him in Siena,

whereof he was lord, when the rage of Florence was destroyed who at that time was proud even as now she is degraded.

Your repute is as the hue of grass which cometh and goeth, and he discolours it through whom it springeth green from the ground.”

And I to him: “Thy true saying fills my heart with holy humility, and lowers my swollen pride, but who is he of whom but now thou wast speaking?”

“That,” he answered, “is Provenzan Salvani; and he is here because in his presumption he thought to bring all Siena in his grasp.

Thus he hath gone and goes without rest since he died; such coin he pays back in satisfaction who yonder is too daring.”

And I: “If that spirit who awaits the brink of life, ere he repents, abides there below, and mounts not up hither,

unless holy prayers aid him, until so much time be passed as he hath lived, how has the coming here been vouchsafed to him?”

“When he lived in highest glory,” said he, “in the market-place of Siena he stationed himself of his free will and put away all shame;

and there, to deliver his friend from the pains he was suffering in Charles’s prison, he brought himself to tremble in every vein.

No more will I tell, and darkly I know that I speak, but short time will pass ere thy neighbours will act so, that thou shalt be able to interpret it. This deed released him from those confines.”