"Suffers not any one to pass her way,
"But also doth harass him, that she destroys him;
"And has a nature so malign and ruthless,
"That never doth she glut her greedy will,
"And after food is hungrier than before."
"Love moved me, which compelleth me to speak."
"Never were persons in the world so swift
"To work and to escape their woe,
"As I, after such words as these were uttered."
"All hope abandon, ye who enter in!"
"Here all suspicion needs must be absorbed,
"All cowardice must needs be here extinct."
"This miserable mode
"Maintain the melancholy souls of those
"Who lived withouten infamy or praise.
"Commingled are they with that caitiff choir
"Of angels, who have not rebellious been,
"Nor faithful were to God, but were for self.
"The heavens expelled them, not to be less fair;
"Nor them the nethermore abyss receives,
"For glory none the damned would have from them."
"These have no longer any hope of death;
"And this blind life of theirs is so debased,
"They envious are of every other fate.
"No fame of them the world permits to be;
Misericord and Justice both disdain them."
"That they sinned not; and if they merit had,
"'Tis not enough, because they had not baptisim
"Which is the portal of the Faith though holdest;
"And if they were before Christianity,
"In the right manner they adored not God."
"For such defects, and not for guilt,
"Lost are we and are only so far punished,
"That without hope we live on in desire."
"And to a place I come where nothing shines."
"The infernal hurricane that never rests
"Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;
"Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them."
"The carnal malefactors were condemned,
"Who reason subjugate to appetite."
"The first of those, of whom intelligence
"Thou fain wouldst have
"The empress was of many languages,
"To sensual vices she was so abandoned,
"That lustful she made licit in her law,
"To remove the blame to which she had been led."
"There is no greater sorrow,
"Than to be mindful of the happy time
"In misery."
"In the third circle am I of the rain,
"Eternal, maledict, and cold, and heavy;
"Its law and quality are never new."
"For the pernicious sin of gluttony
"I, as thou seest, am battered by this rain."
(Envy, arrogance, and avarice)
"Vengeance upon the proud adultery."
"Thus we descended into the fourth chasm
..."As doth the billow there upon Charybdis
"That breaks itself on that which it encounters,
"So here the folk must dance their roundelay.
"Here I saw people, more than elsewhere, many,
"On one side and the other, with great howls,
"Rolling weights forward by main force of chest."
"Clerks those were who no hair covering
"Have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals,
"In whom doth Avarice practice its excess."
"The undiscerning life which made them sordid
"Now makes them unto all discernment dim."
"For all the gold that is beneath the moon,
"Or ever has been, of these weary souls
"Could never make a single one repose."
"And I, who stood intent upon beholding,
"Saw people mud-besprent in that lagoon,
"All of them naked and with angry look.
"They smote each other not alone with hands,
"But with the head and with the breast and feet,
"Tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth."
"Son, thou now beholdest,
"The souls of those whom anger overcame."
"That was an arrogant person in the world;
"Goodness is none, that decks his memory;
"So likewise here his shade is furious.
"How many are esteemed great kings up there,
"Who here shall be like unto swine in mire,
"Leaving behind them horrible dispraises!"
"Here are the Heresiarchs,
"With their disciples of all sects, and much
More than thou thinkest laden are the tombs.
"Here like together with its like is buried;
And more and less the monuments are heated."
"But because fraud is mans' peculiar vice,
"More it displeases God; and so stand lowest
"The fraudulent, and greater dole assails them.
"All the first circle of the Violent is;
"But since force may be used against three persons,
"In three rounds 'tis divided and constructed."
"A death by violence, and painful wounds,
"Are to our neighbour given; and in his substance
"Ruin, and arson, and injurious levies;
"Whence homicides, and he who smites unjustly,
"Marauders, and freebooters, the first round
"Tormetneth all in companies diverse.
"Man may lay violent hands upon himself
"And his own goods; and therefore in the second
"Round must perforce without avail repent
"Whoever of your world deprives himself,
"Who games, and dissipates his property,
"And weepeth there, where he should jocund be."
"Violence can be done the Deity,
"In heart denying and blaspheming Him,
"And by disdaining Nature and her bounty.
"And for this reason doth the smallest round
"Seal with its signet Sodom and Cahors,
"And who, disdaining God, speaks from the heart."
"Wherefore within the second circle nestle
"Hypocrisy, flattery, and who deals in magic
"Falsification, theft and simony,
"Panders, and barrators, and the like filth."
"The river of blood, within which boiling is
"Whoe'er by violence doth injure others."
"A grand old man stands in the mount erect,
"Who holds his shoulders turned tow'rds Damietta,
"And looks at Rome as if it were his mirror."
"There is a place in Hell called Malebolge,
"Wholly of stone and of an iron colour,
"As is the circle that around it turns.
"...And has distinct in valleys ten its bottom."
"Beheld I horned demons with great scourges,
"Who cruelly were beating them behind.
"Ah me! how they did make them lift their legs
"At the first blows! and sooth not any one
"The second waited for, nor for the third."
"I saw upon the sides and on the bottom
"The livid stone with perforations filled,
"All of one size, and every one was round.
"...Out of the mouth of each one there protruded
"The feet of a transgressor, and the legs
"Up to the calf, the rest within remained.
"In all of them the soles were both on fire;
"Wherefore the joints so violently quivered,
"They would have snapped asunder withes and bands."
"And people saw I through the circular valley,
"Silent and weeping, coming at the pace
"Which in this world the Litanies assume.
"As lower down my sight descended on them,
"Wondrously each one seemed to be distorted,
"From chin to the beginning of the chest;
"For tow'rds the reins the countenance was turned,
"And backward it behoved them to advance,
"As to look forward had been taken from them."
"A painted people there below we found,
"Who went about with footsteps very slow,
"Weeping and in their semblance tired and vanquished.'
"They had on mantles with the hoods low down
"Before their eyes, and fashioned of the cut
"That in Cologne they for the monks are made."
"These orange cloaks
"Are made of lead so heavy, that the weights
"Cause in this way their balances to creak."
"Now it behoves thee thus to put off sloth,
"...for sitting upon down,
"Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame,"
"Among this cruel and most dismal throng [of monstrous snakes]
"People were running naked and affrighted.
"Without the hope of hole or heliotrope.
"They had their hands with serpents bound behind them;
"These riveted upon their reins the tail
"And head, and were in front of them entwined."
"For once a man of blood and wrath I saw him.
"And the sinner, who had heard, dissembled not,
"But unto me directed mind and face,
"And with a melancholy shame was painted.
"...'What thou demandest I cannot deny;
"'So low am I put down because I robbed
"'The sacristy of the fair ornaments,
"'And falsely once 'twas laid upon another;"
"We were not made to live like unto brutes
"But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge."
"For who repents not cannot be absolved,
"Nor can one both repent and will at once,
"Because of the contradiction which consents not."
[the ninth Bolgia] "Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
"His heart was visible, and the dismal sack
"That maketh excrement of what is eaten."
"All the diseases in one moat were gathered,
"Such was it here, and such a stench came from it
"As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue." [Punishes forgers]
"And when to me their faces they had lifted,
"Their eyes, which first were only moist within,
"Gushed o'er the eyelids, and the frost congealed
"The tears between, and locked them up again."
"Then I beheld a thousand faces, made
"Purple with cold; whence o'er me comes a shudder,
"And evermore will come, at frozen ponds."
"And there he died; and as thou seest me,
"I saw the three fall, one by one, between
"The fifth day and the sixth; whence I betook me,
"Already blind, to groping over each,
"And three days called them after they were dead;
"Then hunger did what sorrow could not do."
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