yielding to the forceful arguments,
Of silence, as more perilous I deem’d,
And answer’d: ‘Father! since thou washest me
Clear of that guilt wherein I now must fall,
Large promise with performance scant, be sure,
Shall make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.’
“When I was number’d with the dead, then came
Saint Francis for me; but a cherub dark
He met, who cried, ‘Wrong me not; he is mine,
And must below to join the wretched crew,
For the deceitful counsel which he gave.
E’er since I watch’d him, hovering at his hair.
No power can the impenitent absolve;
Nor to repent, and will, at once consist,
By contradiction absolute forbid.’
Oh misery! how I shook myself, when he
Seized me, and cried, “Thou haply thought’st me not
A disputant in logic so exact!’
To Minos down he bore me; and the judge
Twined eight times round his callous back the tail,
Which biting with excess of rage, he spake:
‘This is a guilty soul, that in the fire
Must vanish.’ Hence, perdition-doom’d, I rove
A prey to rankling sorrow, in this garb.”
When he had thus fulfill’d his words, the flame
In dolour parted, beating to and fro,
And writhing its sharp horn. We onward went,
I and my leader, up along the rock,
Far as another arch, that overhangs
The foss, wherein the penalty is paid
Of those who load them with committed sin.
Canto XXVIII
Argument.—They arrive in the ninth gulf, where the sowers of scandal, schismatics, and heretics, are seen with their limbs maimed or divided in different ways. Among these the Poet finds Mohammed, Piero da Medicina, Curio, Mosca, and Bertrand de Born.
Who, e’en in words unfetter’d, might at full
Tell of the wounds and blood that now I saw,
Though he repeated oft the tale? No tongue
So vast a theme could equal, speech and thought
Both impotent alike. If in one band
Collected, stood the people all, who e’er
Pour’d on Apulia’s happy soil their blood,
Slain by the Trojans, and in that long war,[191]
When of the rings the measured booty made
A pile so high, as Rome’s historian writes
Who errs not; with the multitude, that felt
The griding force of Guiscard’s Norman steel,[192]
And those the rest,[193] whose bones are gather’d yet
At Ceperano, there where treachery
Branded the Apulian name, or where beyond
Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo,[194] without arms
The old Alardo conquer’d; and his limbs
One were to show transpierced, another his
Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this
Were but a thing of naught, to the hideous sight
Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost
Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide
As one I mark’d, torn from the chin throughout
Down to the hinder passage: ’twixt the legs
Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay
Open to view, and wretched ventricle,
That turns the englutted aliment to dross.
Whilst eagerly I fix on him my gaze,
He eyed me, with his hands laid his breast bare,
And cried, “Now mark how I do rip me: lo!
How is Mohammed mangled: before me
Walks Ali[195] weeping, from the chin his face
Cleft to the forelock; and the others all,
Whom here thou seest, while they lived, did sow
Scandal and schism, and therefore thus are rent.
A fiend is here behind, who with his sword
Hacks us thus cruelly, slivering again
Each of this ream, when we have compast round
The dismal way; for first our gashes close
Ere we repass before him. But, say who
Art thou, that standest musing on the rock,
Haply so lingering to delay the pain
Sentenced upon thy crimes.” “Him death not yet,”
My guide rejoin’d, “hath overta’en, nor sin
Conducts to torment; but, that he may make
Full trial of your state, I who am dead
Must through the depths of Hell, from orb to orb
Conduct him. Trust my words; for they are true.”
More than a hundred spirits, when that they heard,
Stood in the foss to mark me through amaze
Forgetful of their pangs. “Thou, who perchance
Shalt
