Читать книгу The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso (3 Classic Unabridged Translations in one eBook: Cary's + Longfellow's + Norton's Translation + Original Illustrations by Gustave Doré) - Dante Alighieri - Страница 10

MY sense reviving, that erewhile had droop'd

With pity for the kindred shades, whence grief

O'ercame me wholly, straight around I see

New torments, new tormented souls, which way

Soe'er I move, or turn, or bend my sight.

In the third circle I arrive, of show'rs

Ceaseless, accursed, heavy, and cold, unchang'd

For ever, both in kind and in degree.

Large hail, discolour'd water, sleety flaw

Through the dun midnight air stream'd down amain:

Stank all the land whereon that tempest fell.

Cerberus, cruel monster, fierce and strange,

Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog

Over the multitude immers'd beneath.

His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard,

His belly large, and claw'd the hands, with which

He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs

Piecemeal disparts. Howling there spread, as curs,

Under the rainy deluge, with one side

The other screening, oft they roll them round,

A wretched, godless crew. When that great worm

Descried us, savage Cerberus, he op'd

His jaws, and the fangs show'd us; not a limb

Of him but trembled. Then my guide, his palms

Expanding on the ground, thence filled with earth

Rais'd them, and cast it in his ravenous maw.

E'en as a dog, that yelling bays for food

His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall

His fury, bent alone with eager haste

To swallow it; so dropp'd the loathsome cheeks

Of demon Cerberus, who thund'ring stuns

The spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain.

We, o'er the shades thrown prostrate by the brunt

Of the heavy tempest passing, set our feet

Upon their emptiness, that substance seem'd.

They all along the earth extended lay

Save one, that sudden rais'd himself to sit,

Soon as that way he saw us pass. "O thou!"

He cried, "who through the infernal shades art led,

Own, if again thou know'st me. Thou wast fram'd

Or ere my frame was broken." I replied:

"The anguish thou endur'st perchance so takes

Thy form from my remembrance, that it seems

As if I saw thee never. But inform

Me who thou art, that in a place so sad

Art set, and in such torment, that although

Other be greater, more disgustful none

Can be imagin'd." He in answer thus: