To speak to the Poet but he raised a hand: Is Opizzo da Esti, who had his mortal lightīlown out by his own stepson.” I turned then Is Azzolino and that beside him, the blonde, That brow you see with the hair as black as night Who brought long years of grief to Sicily. “These were the kings of bloodshed and despoilment. Some stood up to their lashes in that torrent,Īnd as we passed them the huge Centaur said: In which the shrieking wraiths were boiled and dyed. Their passage.” So we moved beside our guideĪlong the bank of the scalding purple river That he may guide us to the ford, and thereįor he is not a spirit to move through air.”Ĭhiron turned his head on his right breastĪnd said to Nessus: “Go with them, and guide them,Īnd turn back any others that would contest This sunken way across the floor of Hell,Īssign us one of your troop whom we may follow, He is no bandit.īut in the name of the Power by which I go I alone must lead him through this valley. In which the two mixed natures joined, replied: That is not how the dead go.” My good Guide,

How the one who walks behind moves what he touches? Of his lips, he said to his fellows: “Have you noticed He pushed his great beard back along his jaws.Īnd when he had thus uncovered the huge pouches Out of the blood more than his guilt allows.” They run by that stream in thousands, snapping their bows The other is Pholus, fiercer than all the rest. Is the mighty Chiron, he who nursed Achilles: The one in the middle staring at his chest Was always your own worst fate,” my Guide replied.Īnd to me he said: “That is Nessus, who died in the wood

“Chiron is standing there hard by your side “To what pain are you sent down that dark coast?Īnswer from where you stand, or I draw the bow!” Their long bows and their shafts already in hand.Īnd one of them cried out while still below: Halted, and three of them moved toward us, Riding as once on earth they rode to the chase.Īnd seeing us descend, that straggling band Of a winding river circling through the plainīetween the bank and the cliff, well armed with arrows, Which spurs us so in the short mortal life The river of boiling blood in which are steepedĪll who struck down their fellow men.”Oh blind! The ancient rock was stricken and broke open.īut turn your eyes to the valley there we shall find

That here and elsewhere in the pits of Hell, Whereby the world of matter, as some believe. The souls from Limbo, that all Hell was shakenĪnd all its elements moved toward harmony, It was just before the coming of Him who took This rock had not yet felt the ruinous blast. I came this dark way to the depths of Hell, Which is guarded by that beast upon whose fury “You are wondering perhaps about this ruin I moved on, deep in thought and my Guide to me: Of that ruined rock, which often slid and shifted So we went down across the shale and slate Into the pass, quick, and get over the side!” So danced the Minotaur, and my shrewd GuideĬried out: “Run now! While he is blind with rage! Has struck its death-blow, cannot stand nor runīut leaps from side to side with its life – To observe your punishment in the lost kingdom.”Īs a bull that breaks its chains just when the knife Instructed by your sister, but of himself Off with you, monster this one does not come

Who in the world above served up your death? He gnawed his own flesh in a fit of spleen.Īnd my Master mocked: “How you do pump your breath!ĭo you think, perhaps, it is the Duke of Athens, Such was the passage down the steep, and thereĪt the very top, at the edge of the broken cleft, To the plain below, the rock is so badly shatteredĪ man at the top might make a rough stair of it. Or of some massive fault in the escarpment –įor, from the point on the peak were the mountain split On the bank of the Adige, the result of an earthquake That every eye would shun the sight of it:Ī ruin like the Slides of Mark near Trent The scene that opened from the edge of the pit

Dante alighieri inferno torrent