Divine Comedy: Inferno by Dante Alighieri (inspirational novels .TXT) π
Nisus, Euryalus, and Turnus fell.
He with incessant chase through every town
Shall worry, until he to hell at length
Restore her, thence by envy first let loose.
I for thy profit pond'ring now devise,
That thou mayst follow me, and I thy guide
Will lead thee hence through an eternal space,
Where thou shalt hear despairing shrieks, and see
Spirits of old tormented, who invoke
A second death; and those next view, who dwell
Content in fire, for that they hope to come,
Whene'er the time may be, among the blest,
Into whose regions if thou then desire
T' ascend, a spirit worthier then I
Must lead thee, in whose charge, when I depart,
Thou shalt be left: for that Almighty King,
Who reigns above, a rebel to his law,
Adjudges me, and therefore hath decreed,
That to his city none through me should come.
He in all parts hath sway; there rules, there holds
His citadel and throne. O happy those,
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βRise up,β said the Master, βon thy feet; the way is long and the road is difficult, and already the sun unto mid-tierce[1] returns.β
[2] Tierce is the church office sung at the third hour of the day, and the name is given to the first three hours after sunrise. Midtierce consequently here means about half-past seven oβclock. In Hell Dante never mentions the sun to mark division of time, but now, having issued from Hell, Virgil marks the hour by a reference to the sun.
It was no hallway of a palace where we were, but a natural dungeon that had a bad floor, and lack of light. βBefore I tear me from the abyss,β said I when I had risen up, βmy Master, speak a little to me to draw me out of error. Where is the ice? and this one, how is he fixed thus upside down? and how in such short while has the sun from eve to morn made transit?β And he to me, βThou imaginest that thou still art on the other side of the centre where I laid hold on the hair of the guilty Worm that pierces the world. On that side wast thou so long as I descended; when I turned thou didst pass the point to which from all parts whatever has weight is drawn; and thou art now arrived beneath the hemisphere opposite to that which the great dry land covers, and beneath whose zenith the Man was slain who was born and lived without sin. Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere which forms the other face of the Judecca. Here it is morning when there it is evening; and he who made for us a stairway with his hair is still fixed even as he was before. Upon this side he fell down from heaven, and the earth, which before was spread out here, through fear of him made of the sea a veil, and came to your hemisphere; and perchance to flee from him that land[1] which on this side appears left here this empty space and upward ran back.β
[1] The Mount of Purgatory.
A place is there below, stretching as far from Beelzebub as his tomb extends,[1] which not by sight is known, but by the sound of a rivulet that here descends along the hollow of a rock that it has gnawed with its course that winds and little falls. My Leader and I entered through that hidden way, to return to the bright world. And without care, to have any repose, we mounted up, he first and I second, till through a round opening I saw of those beauteous things which heaven bears, and thence we came forth to see again the stars.
[1] Hell is his tomb; this vacant dark passage through the opposite hemisphere is, of course, of the same depth as Hell from surface to centre.
End of the Project Gutenberg etext of The Divine Comedy of Dante, Volume 1, Hell, translated by Norton.
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