thou shalt stand before her gracious beam,[74]
Whose bright eye all surveys, she of thy life
The future tenor will to thee unfold.”
Forthwith he to the left hand turn’d his feet:
We left the wall, and toward the middle space
Went by a path that to a valley strikes,
Which e’en thus high exhaled its noisome steam.
Canto XI
Argument.—Dante arrives at the verge of a rocky precipice which encloses the seventh circle, where he sees the sepulchre of Anastasius the Heretic; behind the lid of which pausing a little, to make himself capable by degrees of enduring the fetid smell that steamed upward from the abyss, he is instructed by Virgil concerning the manner in which the three following circles are disposed, and what description of sinners is punished in each. He then inquires the reason why the carnal, the gluttonous, the avaricious and prodigal, the wrathful and gloomy, suffer not their punishments within the city of Dis. He next asks how the crime of usury is an offence against God; and at length the two Poets go toward the place from whence a passage leads down to the seventh circle.
Upon the utmost verge of a high bank,
By craggy rocks environ’d round, we came.
Where woes beneath, more cruel yet, were stow’d:
And here, to shun the horrible excess
Of fetid exhalation upward cast
From the profound abyss, behind the lid
Of a great monument we stood retired,
Whereon this scroll I mark’d: “I have in charge
Pope Anastasius,[75] whom Photinus drew
From the right path.” “Ere our descent, behoves
We make delay, that somewhat first the sense,
To the dire breath accustom’d, afterward
Regard it not.” My master thus; to whom
Answering I spake: “Some compensation find,
That the time pass not wholly lost.” He then:
“Lo! how my thoughts e’en to thy wishes tend.
My son! within these rocks,” he thus began,
“Are three close circles in gradation placed,
As these which now thou leavest. Each one is full
Of spirits accurst; but that the sight alone
Hereafter may suffice thee, listen how
And for what cause in durance they abide.
“Of all malicious act abhorr’d in Heaven,
The end is injury; and all such end
Either by force or fraud works other’s woe.
But fraud, because of man’s peculiar evil,
To God is more displeasing; and beneath,
The fraudulent are therefore doom’d to endure
Severer pang. The violent occupy
All the first circle; and because, to force,
Three persons are obnoxious, in three rounds,
Each within other separate, is it framed.
To God, his neighbor, and himself, by man
Force may be offer’d; to himself I say,
And his possessions, as thou soon shalt hear
At full. Death, violent death, and painful wounds
Upon his neighbor he inflicts; and wastes,
By devastation, pillage, and the flames,
His substance. Slayers, and each one that smites
In malice, plunderers, and all robbers, hence
The torment undergo of the first round,
In different herds. Man can do violence
To himself and his own blessings: and for this,
He, in the second round must aye deplore
With unavailing penitence his crime,
Whoe’er deprives himself of life and light,
In reckless lavishment his talent wastes,
And sorrows there where he should dwell in joy.
To God may force be offer’d, in the heart
Denying and blaspheming His high power,
And Nature with her kindly law contemning.
And thence the inmost round marks with its seal
Sodom, and Cahors, and all such as speak
Contemptuously of the Godhead in their hearts.
“Fraud, that in every conscience leaves a sting,
May be by man employ’d on one, whose trust
He wins, or on another, who withholds
Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way
Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes.
Whence in the second circle have their nest,
Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries,
Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce
To lust, or set their honesty at pawn,
With such vile scum as these. The other way
Forgets both Nature’s general love, and that
Which thereto added afterward gives birth
To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle,
Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis,
The traitor is eternally consumed.”
I thus: “Instructor, clearly thy discourse
Proceeds, distinguishing the hideous chasm
And
