in these gnarled joints the soul is tied;
And whether any ever from such frame
Be loosen’d, if thou canst, that also tell.”
Thereat the trunk breath’d hard, and the wind soon
Chang’d into sounds articulate like these;
Briefly ye shall be answer’d. When departs
The fierce soul from the body, by itself
Thence torn asunder, to the seventh gulf
By Minos doom’d, into the wood it falls,
No place assign’d, but wheresoever chance
Hurls it, there sprouting, as a grain of spelt,
It rises to a sapling, growing thence
A savage plant. The Harpies, on its leaves
Then feeding, cause both pain and for the pain
A vent to grief. We, as the rest, shall come
For our own spoils, yet not so that with them
We may again be clad; for what a man
Takes from himself it is not just he have.
Here we perforce shall drag them; and throughout
The dismal glade our bodies shall be hung,
Each on the wild thorn of his wretched shade.”
Attentive yet to listen to the trunk
We stood, expecting farther speech, when us
A noise surpris’d, as when a man perceives
The wild boar and the hunt approach his place
Of station’d watch, who of the beasts and boughs
Loud rustling round him hears. And lo! there came
Two naked, torn with briers, in headlong flight,
That they before them broke each fan o’ th’ wood.
“Haste now,” the foremost cried, “now haste thee death!”
The’ other, as seem’d, impatient of delay
Exclaiming, “Lano!3 not so bent for speed
Thy sinews, in the lists of Toppo’s field.”
And then, for that perchance no longer breath
Suffic’d him, of himself and of a bush
One group he made. Behind them was the wood
Full of black female mastiffs, gaunt and fleet,
As greyhounds that have newly slipp’d the leash.
On him, who squatted down, they stuck their fangs,
And having rent him piecemeal bore away
The tortur’d limbs. My guide then seiz’d my hand,
And led me to the thicket, which in vain
Mourn’d through its bleeding wounds: “O Giacomo
Of Sant’ Andrea!4 what avails it thee,”
It cried, “that of me thou hast made thy screen?
For thy ill life what blame on me recoils?”
When o’er it he had paus’d, my master spake:
“Say who wast thou, that at so many points
Breath’st out with blood thy lamentable speech?”
He answer’d: “Oh, ye spirits: arriv’d in time
To spy the shameful havoc, that from me
My leaves hath sever’d thus, gather them up,
And at the foot of their sad parent-tree
Carefully lay them. In that city’5 I dwelt,
Who for the Baptist her first patron chang’d,
Whence he for this shall cease not with his art
To work her woe: and if there still remain’d not
On Arno’s passage some faint glimpse of him,
Those citizens, who rear’d once more her walls
Upon the ashes left by Attila,
Had labour’d without profit of their toil.
I slung the fatal noose6 from my own roof.”
Footnotes
1 A wild and woody tract, abounding in deer, goats, and wild boars. Cecina is a river not far to the south of Leghorn; Corneto, a small city on the same coast, in the patrimony of the Church.
2 “I it was.” Piero delle Vigne, a native of Capua, who from a low condition raised himself, by his eloquence and legal knowledge, to the office of Chancellor to the Emperor Frederick II. The courtiers, envious of his exalted situation, forged letters to make Frederick believe that he held a secret and traitorous intercourse with the Pope, who was then at enmity with the Emperor. He was cruelly condemned to lose his eyes. Driven to despair by his unmerited calamity he dashed out his brains against the walls of a church, in the year 1245.
3 Lano, a Siennese, who being reduced by prodigality to a state of extreme want, found his existence no longer supportable; and having been sent by his countrymen on a military expedition to assist the Florentines against the Aretini, took that opportunity of exposing himself to certain death, in the engagement which took place at Toppo, near Arezzo. See G. Villani, Hist. lib. vii. c. cxix.
4 Jacopo da Sant’ Andrea, a Paduan, who, having wasted his property in the most wanton acts of profusion, killed himself in despair.
