Of whom, the first that clearly I perceived,

I knew and recognised as that man's shade, Whose cowardice the great refuse achieved. Incontinent I knew, and sure was made,

That I had by the caitiff sect arrived, Whom both God and his enemies upbraid. These miserable wights, who never lived,

Were naked all, and persecuted sore

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By wasps and by large gnats that herein thrived.
These bathed in blood their faces evermore,

Which then, with tears commingled, at their feet Was gathered up by loathly worms good store. And when I gave my glance a broader beat, On a great river's marge I found a force Of ghosts, and said, "Now, master, I entreat To learn what these are; by what fatal course They look so eager to be ferried over, As I discern, although this light be hoarse?" And he replied, "All this thou shalt discover,

As soon as we have brought our steps to rest On Acherontine banks, where sorrows hover."

Then I, with eyelids bashful and deprest,

Through fear my speech was counter to his will, 80 From speech abstaining, to the river prest. And lo! within a bark approaching still

An old man, white with antiquated hide,
Who shouted, "Woe befall you, spirits ill!
By you shall heaven be never more descried;
I come to lead you to the further shore,
Eternal dark, that frost and fire divide.

And thou, quick soul, which hither hast come o'er,
Dispart thyself from these that are the dead."

But when he saw me stirring nathemore,

"By other tracks, by other gates," he said,

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Approach the marge, not here, and by a bark

Of lighter build thy body shall be sped."

Then spoke my guide, "O Charon, leave thy cark ;

This thing is willed in such a place that will
Is one with can,- —now speak not from the mark.”
And hereupon his woolly cheeks were still,

This pilot on the livid swamp enshipt,

Whose eyeball many a ring of flame did fill.

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But all the spirits there, forlorn and stript,

Their color drop, and teeth with teeth engage,
When by the savage sounds their ear is nipt,
Blaspheming God, their proper parentage,

The race of man, the time, and place, and seed
Of their conception, and their natal stage.
Then all together on their track proceed,

In loud bewailings to this margin evil,
For every man who fears not God, decreed.
There, with his eyes of flame, Charon the devil

Assembles them, with beck instead of call,

And aye at each who lags his oar is level.
And even as the leaves in autumn fall

One close upon another, till the spray
Views on the ground her weeds divested all;
Thus Adam's evil race none other way

From off the margin, one by one, 'gan bound, Through becks, as birds the whistle which obey. Then on they wend athwart the wave embrowned,

And ere the first to yonder bank are sped,

Another muster is on this side found.

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"O son," the courteous master to me said,

"The souls, that in the wrath of God expire, Assemble hither, from all countries led

And eagerly to pass the stream require,

For God's high justice spurs them to proceed, 125
Through which the fear is changed into desire.
To pass this way no "spirit of health" can need:
If Charon of thy coming then complain,
Thou mayst discern the import of his rede."
When this was ended, all the darksome plain

Trembled so violently, that from fright
Memory ensteepeth me in sweat again.
The land of tears gave out a gust, whence light
Of lurid crimson overflasht the hell,
Which every feeling in me vanquisht quite,

And like a man whom sleep hath seized, I fell.

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5

CANTO IV.

THE SWound of sleep within my

head was broke

With grating thunder, whence my frame I shook,

Like one that is with violence awoke,

And round, with my reposed eye, 'gan look,

And firmly gazing, as upright I rose,

In cognisance the situation took;

Which now in very truth the margin shows

Of that abysmal valley, dolorous,

That blends a thunder from unbounded woes;
Obscure, unfathomable, nebulous-

For all that to the bottom I might send

My gaze, I could descry no object thus.

"Now let us down that darkling world descend,"
Began the poet, grown quite pallid; "I
Shall be the first, and thou shalt after wend."

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