Читать книгу Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One - Данте Алигьери - Страница 6

CANTO III

THE gateway to the city of Doom. Through me

The entrance to the Everlasting Pain.

The Gateway of the Lost. The Eternal Three

Justice impelled to build me. Here ye see

Wisdom Supreme at work, and Primal Power,

And Love Supernal in their dawnless day.

Ere from their thought creation rose in flower

Eternal first were all things fixed as they.

Of Increate Power infinite formed am I

That deathless as themselves I do not die.

Justice divine has weighed: the doom is clear.

All hope renounce, ye lost, who enter here.

This scroll in gloom above the gate I read,

And found it fearful. “Master, hard,” I said,

“This saying to me.” And he, as one that long

Was customed, answered, “No distrust must wrong

Its Maker, nor thy cowarder mood resume

If here ye enter. This the place of doom

I told thee, where the lost in darkness dwell.

Here, by themselves divorced from light, they fell,

And are as ye shall see them.” Here he lent

A hand to draw me through the gate, and bent

A glance upon my fear so confident

That I, too nearly to my former dread

Returned, through all my heart was comforted,

And downward to the secret things we went.

Downward to night, but not of moon and cloud,

Not night with all its stars, as night we know,

But burdened with an ocean-weight of woe

The darkness closed us.

Sighs, and wailings loud,

Outcries perpetual of recruited pain,

Sounds of strange tongues, and angers that remain

Vengeless for ever, the thick and clamorous crowd

Of discords pressed, that needs I wept to hear,

First hearing. There, with reach of hands anear,

And voices passion-hoarse, or shrilled with fright,

The tumult of the everlasting night,

As sand that dances in continual wind,

Turns on itself for ever.

And I, my head

Begirt with movements, and my ears bedinned

With outcries round me, to my leader said,

“Master, what hear I? Who so overborne

With woes are these?”

He answered, “These be they

That praiseless lived and blameless. Now the scorn

Of Height and Depth alike, abortions drear;

Cast with those abject angels whose delay

To join rebellion, or their Lord defend,

Waiting their proved advantage, flung them here.—

Chased forth from Heaven, lest else its beauties end

The pure perfection of their stainless claim,

Out-herded from the shining gate they came,

Where the deep hells refused them, lest the lost

Boast something baser than themselves.”

And I,

“Master, what grievance hath their failure cost,

That through the lamentable dark they cry?”

He answered, “Briefly at a thing not worth

We glance, and pass forgetful. Hope in death

They have not. Memory of them on the earth

Where once they lived remains not. Nor the breath

Of Justice shall condemn, nor Mercy plead,

But all alike disdain them. That they know

Themselves so mean beneath aught else constrains

The envious outcries that too long ye heed.

Move past, but speak not.”

Then I looked, and lo,

Were souls in ceaseless and unnumbered trains

That past me whirled unending, vainly led

Nowhither, in useless and unpausing haste.

A fluttering ensign all their guide, they chased

Themselves for ever. I had not thought the dead,

The whole world’s dead, so many as these. I saw

The shadow of him elect to Peter’s seat

Who made the great refusal, and the law,

The unswerving law that left them this retreat

To seal the abortion of their lives, became

Illumined to me, and themselves I knew,

To God and all his foes the futile crew

How hateful in their everlasting shame.

I saw these victims of continued death

—For lived they never—were naked all, and loud

Around them closed a never-ceasing cloud

Of hornets and great wasps, that buzzed and clung,

—Weak pain for weaklings meet,—and where they stung,

Blood from their faces streamed, with sobbing breath,

And all the ground beneath with tears and blood

Was drenched, and crawling in that loathsome mud

There were great worms that drank it.

Gladly thence

I gazed far forward. Dark and wide the flood

That flowed before us. On the nearer shore

Were people waiting. “Master, show me whence

These came, and who they be, and passing hence

Where go they? Wherefore wait they there content,

—The faint light shows it,—for their transit o’er

The unbridged abyss?”

He answered, “When we stand

Together, waiting on the joyless strand,

In all it shall be told thee.” If he meant

Reproof I know not, but with shame I bent

My downward eyes, and no more spake until

The bank we reached, and on the stream beheld

A bark ply toward us.

Of exceeding eld,

And hoary showed the steersman, screaming shrill,

With horrid glee the while he neared us, “Woe

To ye, depraved!—Is here no Heaven, but ill

The place where I shall herd ye. Ice and fire

And darkness are the wages of their hire

Who serve unceasing here—But thou that there

Dost wait though live, depart ye. Yea, forbear!

A different passage and a lighter fare

Is destined thine.”

But here my guide replied,

“Nay, Charon, cease; or to thy grief ye chide.

It There is willed, where that is willed shall be,

That ye shall pass him to the further side,

Nor question more.”

The fleecy cheeks thereat,

Blown with fierce speech before, were drawn and flat,

And his flame-circled eyes subdued, to hear

That mandate given. But those of whom he spake

In bitter glee, with naked limbs ashake,

And chattering teeth received it. Seemed that then

They first were conscious where they came, and fear

Abject and frightful shook them; curses burst

In clamorous discords forth; the race of men,

Their parents, and their God, the place, the time,

Of their conceptions and their births, accursed

Alike they called, blaspheming Heaven. But yet

Slow steps toward the waiting bark they set,

With terrible wailing while they moved. And so

They came reluctant to the shore of woe

That waits for all who fear not God, and not

Them only.

Then the demon Charon rose

To herd them in, with eyes that furnace-hot

Glowed at the task, and lifted oar to smite

Who lingered.

As the leaves, when autumn shows,

One after one descending, leave the bough,

Or doves come downward to the call, so now

The evil seed of Adam to endless night,

As Charon signalled, from the shore’s bleak height,

Cast themselves downward to the bark. The brown

And bitter flood received them, and while they passed

Were others gathering, patient as the last,

Not conscious of their nearing doom.

“My son,”

—Replied my guide the unspoken thought—“is none

Beneath God’s wrath who dies in field or town,

Or earth’s wide space, or whom the waters drown,

But here he cometh at last, and that so spurred

By Justice, that his fear, as those ye heard,

Impels him forward like desire. Is not

One spirit of all to reach the fatal spot

That God’s love holdeth, and hence, if Charon chide,

Ye well may take it.—Raise thy heart, for now,

Constrained of Heaven, he must thy course allow.”

Yet how I passed I know not. For the ground

Trembled that heard him, and a fearful sound

Of issuing wind arose, and blood-red light

Broke from beneath our feet, and sense and sight

Left me. The memory with cold sweat once more

Reminds me of the sudden-crimsoned night,

As sank I senseless by the dreadful shore.