she,“is happiness recalled in misery.
Your master knows this well and if you need 88
to understand, I’ll tell as you command.
To pass an idle hour one afternoon
we chanced to read of how Sir Lancelot 91
was overcome by love of Guinevere.
This youth who never shall depart from me
trembling all over, dared to kiss my mouth. 94
That book seduced us. There’s no more to say
except, of course, we read no more that day.”
She wept. The other spirit wept – me too. 97
The three of us shed tears without restraint.
Because I could not give them any help
I clutched my head and fell down in a faint. 100
6: Cerberus. Doom of Gluttons
1 Returning to my senses once again
from sorrow that confused them utterly,
I saw a different multitude in pain,
4 not reeling, writhing, spirits spinning round,
but corpulences stuck in muddy ground
under a freezing hard unending rain
7 of filthy water, hailstones, blasts of snow
descending through a murkiness of fog
to make the earth below a stinking bog
10 from which the sunken souls halfway protrude.
Across this mire prowls a rude vicious beast
three-headed, each head howling like a dog.
13 His name is Cerberus, his eyes blood-red,
black hair and beards befouled by greasy phlegm,
his belly gross, each paw with knife-like claws
16 that stab and rip sinners they prance upon,
who also howl like dogs. They cannot stop
squirming to turn their downside up again
19 to shield their upside from the dreadful rain.
Cerberus, glaring on us, snarled and showed
three pairs of open jaws with dragon fangs,
his body twitching, bristled to attack. 22
My guide stooped swiftly, scooped up blood-rich mud,
then accurately flung a handful down
each throat. Howling and snarling stopped at once. 25
Like hungry hound gorging on juicy bone
he left the damned alone as we moved on
across the swamp where footsteps often sank 28
down through a groaning ghost to mud below.
Then one, twisting half up beside our way
cried out, “O Dante, surely you know me? 31
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