Already was the flame erect and quiet,
\nTo speak no more, and now departed from us
\nWith the permission of the gentle Poet;<\/p>\n
When yet another, which behind it came,
\nCaused us to turn our eyes upon its top
\nBy a confused sound that issued from it.<\/p>\n
As the Sicilian bull (that bellowed first
\nWith the lament of him, and that was right,
\nWho with his file had modulated it)<\/p>\n
Bellowed so with the voice of the afflicted,
\nThat, notwithstanding it was made of brass,
\nStill it appeared with agony transfixed;<\/p>\n
Thus, by not having any way or issue
\nAt first from out the fire, to its own language
\nConverted were the melancholy words.<\/p>\n
But afterwards, when they had gathered way
\nUp through the point, giving it that vibration
\nThe tongue had given them in their passage out,<\/p>\n
We heard it said: “O thou, at whom I aim
\nMy voice, and who but now wast speaking Lombard,
\nSaying, ‘Now go thy way, no more I urge thee,’<\/p>\n
Because I come perchance a little late,
\nTo stay and speak with me let it not irk thee;
\nThou seest it irks not me, and I am burning.<\/p>\n
If thou but lately into this blind world
\nHast fallen down from that sweet Latian land,
\nWherefrom I bring the whole of my transgression,<\/p>\n
Say, if the Romagnuols have peace or war,
\nFor I was from the mountains there between
\nUrbino and the yoke whence Tiber bursts.”<\/p>\n
I still was downward bent and listening,
\nWhen my Conductor touched me on the side,
\nSaying: “Speak thou: this one a Latian is.”<\/p>\n
And I, who had beforehand my reply
\nIn readiness, forthwith began to speak:
\n“O soul, that down below there art concealed,<\/p>\n
Romagna thine is not and never has been
\nWithout war in the bosom of its tyrants;
\nBut open war I none have left there now.<\/p>\n
Ravenna stands as it long years has stood;
\nThe Eagle of Polenta there is brooding,
\nSo that she covers Cervia with her vans.<\/p>\n
The city which once made the long resistance,
\nAnd of the French a sanguinary heap,
\nBeneath the Green Paws finds itself again;<\/p>\n
Verrucchio’s ancient Mastiff and the new,
\nWho made such bad disposal of Montagna,
\nWhere they are wont make wimbles of their teeth.<\/p>\n
The cities of Lamone and Santerno
\nGoverns the Lioncel of the white lair,
\nWho changes sides ‘twixt summer-time and winter;<\/p>\n
And that of which the Savio bathes the flank,
\nEven as it lies between the plain and mountain,
\nLives between tyranny and a free state.<\/p>\n
Now I entreat thee tell us who thou art;
\nBe not more stubborn than the rest have been,
\nSo may thy name hold front there in the world.”<\/p>\n
After the fire a little more had roared
\nIn its own fashion, the sharp point it moved
\nThis way and that, and then gave forth such breath:<\/p>\n
“If I believed that my reply were made
\nTo one who to the world would e’er return,
\nThis flame without more flickering would stand still;<\/p>\n
But inasmuch as never from this depth
\nDid any one return, if I hear true,
\nWithout the fear of infamy I answer,<\/p>\n
I was a man of arms, then Cordelier,
\nBelieving thus begirt to make amends;
\nAnd truly my belief had been fulfilled<\/p>\n
But for the High Priest, whom may ill betide,
\nWho put me back into my former sins;
\nAnd how and wherefore I will have thee hear.<\/p>\n
While I was still the form of bone and pulp
\nMy mother gave to me, the deeds I did
\nWere not those of a lion, but a fox.<\/p>\n
The machinations and the covert ways
\nI knew them all, and practised so their craft,
\nThat to the ends of earth the sound went forth.<\/p>\n
When now unto that portion of mine age
\nI saw myself arrived, when each one ought
\nTo lower the sails, and coil away the ropes,<\/p>\n
That which before had pleased me then displeased me;
\nAnd penitent and confessing I surrendered,
\nAh woe is me! and it would have bestead me;<\/p>\n
The Leader of the modern Pharisees
\nHaving a war near unto Lateran,
\nAnd not with Saracens nor with the Jews,<\/p>\n
For each one of his enemies was Christian,
\nAnd none of them had been to conquer Acre,
\nNor merchandising in the Sultan’s land,<\/p>\n
Nor the high office, nor the sacred orders,
\nIn him regarded, nor in me that cord
\nWhich used to make those girt with it more meagre;<\/p>\n
But even as Constantine sought out Sylvester
\nTo cure his leprosy, within Soracte,
\nSo this one sought me out as an adept<\/p>\n
To cure him of the fever of his pride.
\nCounsel he asked of me, and I was silent,
\nBecause his words appeared inebriate.<\/p>\n
And then he said: ‘Be not thy heart afraid;
\nHenceforth I thee absolve; and thou instruct me
\nHow to raze Palestrina to the ground.<\/p>\n
Heaven have I power to lock and to unlock,
\nAs thou dost know; therefore the keys are two,
\nThe which my predecessor held not dear.’<\/p>\n
Then urged me on his weighty arguments
\nThere, where my silence was the worst advice;
\nAnd said I: ‘Father, since thou washest me<\/p>\n
Of that sin into which I now must fall,
\nThe promise long with the fulfilment short
\nWill make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.’<\/p>\n
Francis came afterward, when I was dead,
\nFor me; but one of the black Cherubim
\nSaid to him: ‘Take him not; do me no wrong;<\/p>\n
He must come down among my servitors,
\nBecause he gave the fraudulent advice
\nFrom which time forth I have been at his hair;<\/p>\n
For who repents not cannot be absolved,
\nNor can one both repent and will at once,
\nBecause of the contradiction which consents not.’<\/p>\n
O miserable me! how I did shudder
\nWhen he seized on me, saying: ‘Peradventure
\nThou didst not think that I was a logician!’<\/p>\n
He bore me unto Minos, who entwined
\nEight times his tail about his stubborn back,
\nAnd after he had bitten it in great rage,<\/p>\n
Said: ‘Of the thievish fire a culprit this;’
\nWherefore, here where thou seest, am I lost,
\nAnd vested thus in going I bemoan me.”<\/p>\n
When it had thus completed its recital,
\nThe flame departed uttering lamentations,
\nWrithing and flapping its sharp-pointed horn.<\/p>\n
Onward we passed, both I and my Conductor,
\nUp o’er the crag above another arch,
\nWhich the moat covers, where is paid the fee<\/p>\n
By those who, sowing discord, win their burden.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Who ever could, e’en with untrammelled words,
\nTell of the blood and of the wounds in full
\nWhich now I saw, by many times narrating?<\/p>\n
Each tongue would for a certainty fall short
\nBy reason of our speech and memory,
\nThat have small room to comprehend so much.<\/p>\n
If were again assembled all the people
\nWhich formerly upon the fateful land
\nOf Puglia were lamenting for their blood<\/p>\n
Shed by the Romans and the lingering war
\nThat of the rings made such illustrious spoils,
\nAs Livy has recorded, who errs not,<\/p>\n
With those who felt the agony of blows
\nBy making counterstand to Robert Guiscard,
\nAnd all the rest, whose bones are gathered still<\/p>\n
At Ceperano, where a renegade
\nWas each Apulian, and at Tagliacozzo,
\nWhere without arms the old Alardo conquered,<\/p>\n
And one his limb transpierced, and one lopped off,
\nShould show, it would be nothing to compare
\nWith the disgusting mode of the ninth Bolgia.<\/p>\n
A cask by losing centre-piece or cant
\nWas never shattered so, as I saw one
\nRent from the chin to where one breaketh wind.<\/p>\n
Between his legs were hanging down his entrails;
\nHis heart was visible, and the dismal sack
\nThat maketh excrement of what is eaten.<\/p>\n
While I was all absorbed in seeing him,
\nHe looked at me, and opened with his hands
\nHis bosom, saying: “See now how I rend me;<\/p>\n
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
\nIn front of me doth Ali weeping go,
\nCleft in the face from forelock unto chin;<\/p>\n
And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
\nDisseminators of scandal and of schism
\nWhile living were, and therefore are cleft thus.<\/p>\n
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us
\nThus cruelly, unto the falchion’s edge
\nPutting again each one of all this ream,<\/p>\n
When we have gone around the doleful road;
\nBy reason that our wounds are closed again
\nEre any one in front of him repass.<\/p>\n
But who art thou, that musest on the crag,
\nPerchance to postpone going to the pain
\nThat is adjudged upon thine accusations?”<\/p>\n
“Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him,”
\nMy Master made reply, “to be tormented;
\nBut to procure him full experience,<\/p>\n
Me, who am dead, behoves it to conduct him
\nDown here through Hell, from circle unto circle;
\nAnd this is true as that I speak to thee.”<\/p>\n
More than a hundred were there when they heard him,
\nWho in the moat stood still to look at me,
\nThrough wonderment oblivious of their torture.<\/p>\n
“Now say to Fra Dolcino, then, to arm him,
\nThou, who perhaps wilt shortly see the sun,
\nIf soon he wish not here to follow me,<\/p>\n
So with provisions, that no stress of snow
\nMay give the victory to the Novarese,
\nWhich otherwise to gain would not be easy.”<\/p>\n
After one foot to go away he lifted,
\nThis word did Mahomet say unto me,
\nThen to depart upon the ground he stretched it.<\/p>\n
Another one, who had his throat pierced through,
\nAnd nose cut off close underneath the brows,
\nAnd had no longer but a single ear,<\/p>\n
Staying to look in wonder with the others,
\nBefore the others did his gullet open,
\nWhich outwardly was red in every part,<\/p>\n
And said: “O thou, whom guilt doth not condemn,
\nAnd whom I once saw up in Latian land,
\nUnless too great similitude deceive me,<\/p>\n
Call to remembrance Pier da Medicina,
\nIf e’er thou see again the lovely plain
\nThat from Vercelli slopes to Marcabo,<\/p>\n
And make it known to the best two of Fano,
\nTo Messer Guido and Angiolello likewise,
\nThat if foreseeing here be not in vain,<\/p>\n
Cast over from their vessel shall they be,
\nAnd drowned near unto the Cattolica,
\nBy the betrayal of a tyrant fell.<\/p>\n
Between the isles of Cyprus and Majorca
\nNeptune ne’er yet beheld so great a crime,
\nNeither of pirates nor Argolic people.<\/p>\n
That traitor, who sees only with one eye,
\nAnd holds the land, which some one here with me
\nWould fain be fasting from the vision of,<\/p>\n
Will make them come unto a parley with him;
\nThen will do so, that to Focara’s wind
\nThey will not stand in need of vow or prayer.”<\/p>\n
And I to him: “Show to me and declare,
\nIf thou wouldst have me bear up news of thee,
\nWho is this person of the bitter vision.”<\/p>\n
Then did he lay his hand upon the jaw
\nOf one of his companions, and his mouth
\nOped, crying: “This is he, and he speaks not.<\/p>\n
This one, being banished, every doubt submerged
\nIn Caesar by affirming the forearmed
\nAlways with detriment allowed delay.”<\/p>\n
O how bewildered unto me appeared,
\nWith tongue asunder in his windpipe slit,
\nCurio, who in speaking was so bold!<\/p>\n
And one, who both his hands dissevered had,
\nThe stumps uplifting through the murky air,
\nSo that the blood made horrible his face,<\/p>\n
Cried out: “Thou shalt remember Mosca also,
\nWho said, alas! ‘A thing done has an end!’
\nWhich was an ill seed for the Tuscan people.”<\/p>\n
“And death unto thy race,” thereto I added;
\nWhence he, accumulating woe on woe,
\nDeparted, like a person sad and crazed.<\/p>\n
But I remained to look upon the crowd;
\nAnd saw a thing which I should be afraid,
\nWithout some further proof, even to recount,<\/p>\n
If it were not that conscience reassures me,
\nThat good companion which emboldens man
\nBeneath the hauberk of its feeling pure.<\/p>\n
I truly saw, and still I seem to see it,
\nA trunk without a head walk in like manner
\nAs walked the others of the mournful herd.<\/p>\n
And by the hair it held the head dissevered,
\nHung from the hand in fashion of a lantern,
\nAnd that upon us gazed and said: “O me!”<\/p>\n
It of itself made to itself a lamp,
\nAnd they were two in one, and one in two;
\nHow that can be, He knows who so ordains it.<\/p>\n
When it was come close to the bridge’s foot,
\nIt lifted high its arm with all the head,
\nTo bring more closely unto us its words,<\/p>\n
Which were: “Behold now the sore penalty,
\nThou, who dost breathing go the dead beholding;
\nBehold if any be as great as this.<\/p>\n
And so that thou may carry news of me,
\nKnow that Bertram de Born am I, the same
\nWho gave to the Young King the evil comfort.<\/p>\n
I made the father and the son rebellious;
\nAchitophel not more with Absalom
\nAnd David did with his accursed goadings.<\/p>\n
Because I parted persons so united,
\nParted do I now bear my brain, alas!
\nFrom its beginning, which is in this trunk.<\/p>\n
Thus is observed in me the counterpoise.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The many people and the divers wounds
\nThese eyes of mine had so inebriated,
\nThat they were wishful to stand still and weep;<\/p>\n
But said Virgilius: “What dost thou still gaze at?
\nWhy is thy sight still riveted down there
\nAmong the mournful, mutilated shades?<\/p>\n
Thou hast not done so at the other Bolge;
\nConsider, if to count them thou believest,
\nThat two-and-twenty miles the valley winds,<\/p>\n
And now the moon is underneath our feet;
\nHenceforth the time allotted us is brief,
\nAnd more is to be seen than what thou seest.”<\/p>\n
“If thou hadst,” I made answer thereupon,
\n“Attended to the cause for which I looked,
\nPerhaps a longer stay thou wouldst have pardoned.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile my Guide departed, and behind him
\nI went, already making my reply,
\nAnd superadding: “In that cavern where<\/p>\n
I held mine eyes with such attention fixed,
\nI think a spirit of my blood laments
\nThe sin which down below there costs so much.”<\/p>\n
Then said the Master: “Be no longer broken
\nThy thought from this time forward upon him;
\nAttend elsewhere, and there let him remain;<\/p>\n
For him I saw below the little bridge,
\nPointing at thee, and threatening with his finger
\nFiercely, and heard him called Geri del Bello.<\/p>\n
So wholly at that time wast thou impeded
\nBy him who formerly held Altaforte,
\nThou didst not look that way; so he departed.”<\/p>\n
“O my Conductor, his own violent death,
\nWhich is not yet avenged for him,” I said,
\n“By any who is sharer in the shame,<\/p>\n
Made him disdainful; whence he went away,
\nAs I imagine, without speaking to me,
\nAnd thereby made me pity him the more.”<\/p>\n
Thus did we speak as far as the first place
\nUpon the crag, which the next valley shows
\nDown to the bottom, if there were more light.<\/p>\n
When we were now right over the last cloister
\nOf Malebolge, so that its lay-brothers
\nCould manifest themselves unto our sight,<\/p>\n
Divers lamentings pierced me through and through,
\nWhich with compassion had their arrows barbed,
\nWhereat mine ears I covered with my hands.<\/p>\n
What pain would be, if from the hospitals
\nOf Valdichiana, ‘twixt July and September,
\nAnd of Maremma and Sardinia<\/p>\n
All the diseases in one moat were gathered,
\nSuch was it here, and such a stench came from it
\nAs from putrescent limbs is wont to issue.<\/p>\n
We had descended on the furthest bank
\nFrom the long crag, upon the left hand still,
\nAnd then more vivid was my power of sight<\/p>\n
Down tow’rds the bottom, where the ministress
\nOf the high Lord, Justice infallible,
\nPunishes forgers, which she here records.<\/p>\n
I do not think a sadder sight to see
\nWas in Aegina the whole people sick,
\n(When was the air so full of pestilence,<\/p>\n
The animals, down to the little worm,
\nAll fell, and afterwards the ancient people,
\nAccording as the poets have affirmed,<\/p>\n
Were from the seed of ants restored again,)
\nThan was it to behold through that dark valley
\nThe spirits languishing in divers heaps.<\/p>\n
This on the belly, that upon the back
\nOne of the other lay, and others crawling
\nShifted themselves along the dismal road.<\/p>\n
We step by step went onward without speech,
\nGazing upon and listening to the sick
\nWho had not strength enough to lift their bodies.<\/p>\n
I saw two sitting leaned against each other,
\nAs leans in heating platter against platter,
\nFrom head to foot bespotted o’er with scabs;<\/p>\n
And never saw I plied a currycomb
\nBy stable-boy for whom his master waits,
\nOr him who keeps awake unwillingly,<\/p>\n
As every one was plying fast the bite
\nOf nails upon himself, for the great rage
\nOf itching which no other succour had.<\/p>\n
And the nails downward with them dragged the scab,
\nIn fashion as a knife the scales of bream,
\nOr any other fish that has them largest.<\/p>\n
“O thou, that with thy fingers dost dismail thee,”
\nBegan my Leader unto one of them,
\n“And makest of them pincers now and then,<\/p>\n
Tell me if any Latian is with those
\nWho are herein; so may thy nails suffice thee
\nTo all eternity unto this work.”<\/p>\n
“Latians are we, whom thou so wasted seest,
\nBoth of us here,” one weeping made reply;
\n“But who art thou, that questionest about us?”<\/p>\n
And said the Guide: “One am I who descends
\nDown with this living man from cliff to cliff,
\nAnd I intend to show Hell unto him.”<\/p>\n
Then broken was their mutual support,
\nAnd trembling each one turned himself to me,
\nWith others who had heard him by rebound.<\/p>\n
Wholly to me did the good Master gather,
\nSaying: “Say unto them whate’er thou wishest.”
\nAnd I began, since he would have it so:<\/p>\n
“So may your memory not steal away
\nIn the first world from out the minds of men,
\nBut so may it survive ‘neath many suns,<\/p>\n
Say to me who ye are, and of what people;
\nLet not your foul and loathsome punishment
\nMake you afraid to show yourselves to me.”<\/p>\n
“I of Arezzo was,” one made reply,
\n“And Albert of Siena had me burned;
\nBut what I died for does not bring me here.<\/p>\n
‘Tis true I said to him, speaking in jest,
\nThat I could rise by flight into the air,
\nAnd he who had conceit, but little wit,<\/p>\n
Would have me show to him the art; and only
\nBecause no Daedalus I made him, made me
\nBe burned by one who held him as his son.<\/p>\n
But unto the last Bolgia of the ten,
\nFor alchemy, which in the world I practised,
\nMinos, who cannot err, has me condemned.”<\/p>\n
And to the Poet said I: “Now was ever
\nSo vain a people as the Sienese?
\nNot for a certainty the French by far.”<\/p>\n
Whereat the other leper, who had heard me,
\nReplied unto my speech: “Taking out Stricca,
\nWho knew the art of moderate expenses,<\/p>\n
And Niccolo, who the luxurious use
\nOf cloves discovered earliest of all
\nWithin that garden where such seed takes root;<\/p>\n
And taking out the band, among whom squandered
\nCaccia d’Ascian his vineyards and vast woods,
\nAnd where his wit the Abbagliato proffered!<\/p>\n
But, that thou know who thus doth second thee
\nAgainst the Sienese, make sharp thine eye
\nTow’rds me, so that my face well answer thee,<\/p>\n
And thou shalt see I am Capocchio’s shade,
\nWho metals falsified by alchemy;
\nThou must remember, if I well descry thee,<\/p>\n
How I a skilful ape of nature was.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
‘Twas at the time when Juno was enraged,
\nFor Semele, against the Theban blood,
\nAs she already more than once had shown,<\/p>\n
So reft of reason Athamas became,
\nThat, seeing his own wife with children twain
\nWalking encumbered upon either hand,<\/p>\n
He cried: “Spread out the nets, that I may take
\nThe lioness and her whelps upon the passage;”
\nAnd then extended his unpitying claws,<\/p>\n
Seizing the first, who had the name Learchus,
\nAnd whirled him round, and dashed him on a rock;
\nAnd she, with the other burthen, drowned herself;–<\/p>\n
And at the time when fortune downward hurled
\nThe Trojan’s arrogance, that all things dared,
\nSo that the king was with his kingdom crushed,<\/p>\n
Hecuba sad, disconsolate, and captive,
\nWhen lifeless she beheld Polyxena,
\nAnd of her Polydorus on the shore<\/p>\n
Of ocean was the dolorous one aware,
\nOut of her senses like a dog she barked,
\nSo much the anguish had her mind distorted;<\/p>\n
But not of Thebes the furies nor the Trojan
\nWere ever seen in any one so cruel
\nIn goading beasts, and much more human members,<\/p>\n
As I beheld two shadows pale and naked,
\nWho, biting, in the manner ran along
\nThat a boar does, when from the sty turned loose.<\/p>\n
One to Capocchio came, and by the nape
\nSeized with its teeth his neck, so that in dragging
\nIt made his belly grate the solid bottom.<\/p>\n
And the Aretine, who trembling had remained,
\nSaid to me: “That mad sprite is Gianni Schicchi,
\nAnd raving goes thus harrying other people.”<\/p>\n
“O,” said I to him, “so may not the other
\nSet teeth on thee, let it not weary thee
\nTo tell us who it is, ere it dart hence.”<\/p>\n
And he to me: “That is the ancient ghost
\nOf the nefarious Myrrha, who became
\nBeyond all rightful love her father’s lover.<\/p>\n
She came to sin with him after this manner,
\nBy counterfeiting of another’s form;
\nAs he who goeth yonder undertook,<\/p>\n
That he might gain the lady of the herd,
\nTo counterfeit in himself Buoso Donati,
\nMaking a will and giving it due form.”<\/p>\n
And after the two maniacs had passed
\nOn whom I held mine eye, I turned it back
\nTo look upon the other evil-born.<\/p>\n
I saw one made in fashion of a lute,
\nIf he had only had the groin cut off
\nJust at the point at which a man is forked.<\/p>\n
The heavy dropsy, that so disproportions
\nThe limbs with humours, which it ill concocts,
\nThat the face corresponds not to the belly,<\/p>\n
Compelled him so to hold his lips apart
\nAs does the hectic, who because of thirst
\nOne tow’rds the chin, the other upward turns.<\/p>\n
“O ye, who without any torment are,
\nAnd why I know not, in the world of woe,”
\nHe said to us, “behold, and be attentive<\/p>\n
Unto the misery of Master Adam;
\nI had while living much of what I wished,
\nAnd now, alas! a drop of water crave.<\/p>\n
The rivulets, that from the verdant hills
\nOf Cassentin descend down into Arno,
\nMaking their channels to be cold and moist,<\/p>\n
Ever before me stand, and not in vain;
\nFor far more doth their image dry me up
\nThan the disease which strips my face of flesh.<\/p>\n
The rigid justice that chastises me
\nDraweth occasion from the place in which
\nI sinned, to put the more my sighs in flight.<\/p>\n
There is Romena, where I counterfeited
\nThe currency imprinted with the Baptist,
\nFor which I left my body burned above.<\/p>\n
But if I here could see the tristful soul
\nOf Guido, or Alessandro, or their brother,
\nFor Branda’s fount I would not give the sight.<\/p>\n
One is within already, if the raving
\nShades that are going round about speak truth;
\nBut what avails it me, whose limbs are tied?<\/p>\n
If I were only still so light, that in
\nA hundred years I could advance one inch,
\nI had already started on the way,<\/p>\n
Seeking him out among this squalid folk,
\nAlthough the circuit be eleven miles,
\nAnd be not less than half a mile across.<\/p>\n
For them am I in such a family;
\nThey did induce me into coining florins,
\nWhich had three carats of impurity.”<\/p>\n
And I to him: “Who are the two poor wretches
\nThat smoke like unto a wet hand in winter,
\nLying there close upon thy right-hand confines?”<\/p>\n
“I found them here,” replied he, “when I rained
\nInto this chasm, and since they have not turned,
\nNor do I think they will for evermore.<\/p>\n
One the false woman is who accused Joseph,
\nThe other the false Sinon, Greek of Troy;
\nFrom acute fever they send forth such reek.”<\/p>\n
And one of them, who felt himself annoyed
\nAt being, peradventure, named so darkly,
\nSmote with the fist upon his hardened paunch.<\/p>\n
It gave a sound, as if it were a drum;
\nAnd Master Adam smote him in the face,
\nWith arm that did not seem to be less hard,<\/p>\n
Saying to him: “Although be taken from me
\nAll motion, for my limbs that heavy are,
\nI have an arm unfettered for such need.”<\/p>\n
Whereat he answer made: “When thou didst go
\nUnto the fire, thou hadst it not so ready:
\nBut hadst it so and more when thou wast coining.”<\/p>\n
The dropsical: “Thou sayest true in that;
\nBut thou wast not so true a witness there,
\nWhere thou wast questioned of the truth at Troy.”<\/p>\n
“If I spake false, thou falsifiedst the coin,”
\nSaid Sinon; “and for one fault I am here,
\nAnd thou for more than any other demon.”<\/p>\n
“Remember, perjurer, about the horse,”
\nHe made reply who had the swollen belly,
\n“And rueful be it thee the whole world knows it.”<\/p>\n
“Rueful to thee the thirst be wherewith cracks
\nThy tongue,” the Greek said, “and the putrid water
\nThat hedges so thy paunch before thine eyes.”<\/p>\n
Then the false-coiner: “So is gaping wide
\nThy mouth for speaking evil, as ’tis wont;
\nBecause if I have thirst, and humour stuff me<\/p>\n
Thou hast the burning and the head that aches,
\nAnd to lick up the mirror of Narcissus
\nThou wouldst not want words many to invite thee.”<\/p>\n
In listening to them was I wholly fixed,
\nWhen said the Master to me: “Now just look,
\nFor little wants it that I quarrel with thee.”<\/p>\n
When him I heard in anger speak to me,
\nI turned me round towards him with such shame
\nThat still it eddies through my memory.<\/p>\n
And as he is who dreams of his own harm,
\nWho dreaming wishes it may be a dream,
\nSo that he craves what is, as if it were not;<\/p>\n
Such I became, not having power to speak,
\nFor to excuse myself I wished, and still
\nExcused myself, and did not think I did it.<\/p>\n
“Less shame doth wash away a greater fault,”
\nThe Master said, “than this of thine has been;
\nTherefore thyself disburden of all sadness,<\/p>\n
And make account that I am aye beside thee,
\nIf e’er it come to pass that fortune bring thee
\nWhere there are people in a like dispute;<\/p>\n
For a base wish it is to wish to hear it.”<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t