Inferno: Cantos 1–5

In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

Then was a little respite to the fear,
That in my heart’s recesses deep had lain,
All of that night, so pitifully pass’d:
And as a man, with difficult short breath,
Forespent with toiling, ’scap’d from sea to shore,
Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands
At gaze; e’en so my spirit, that yet fail’d
Struggling with terror, turn’d to view the straits,
That none hath pass’d and liv’d.

A she-wolf
Was at his heels, who in her leanness seem’d
Full of all wants, and many a land hath made
Disconsolate ere now.

When him in that great desert I espied,
“Have mercy on me!” cried I out aloud,
“Spirit! or living man! what e’er thou be!”

From which such copious floods of eloquence
Have issued?

Now was the day departing, and the air,
Imbrown’d with shadows, from their toils releas’d
All animals on earth; and I alone
Prepar’d myself the conflict to sustain,
Both of sad pity, and that perilous road,
Which my unerring memory shall retrace.

O high genius! now vouchsafe
Your aid!

For certain on the brink
I found me of the lamentable vale,
The dread abyss, that joins a thund’rous sound
Of plaints innumerable.

Piercing the secret purport of my speech,
He answer’d: “I was new to that estate,
When I beheld a puissant one arrive
Amongst us, with victorious trophy crown’d.

Piercing the secret purport of my speech,
He answer’d: “I was new to that estate,
When I beheld a puissant one arrive
Amongst us, with victorious trophy crown’d.

Meantime a voice I heard: “Honour the bard
Sublime! his shade returns that left us late!”
No sooner ceas’d the sound, than I beheld
Four mighty spirits toward us bend their steps,
Of semblance neither sorrowful nor glad.

When thus my master kind began: “Mark him,
Who in his right hand bears that falchion keen,
The other three preceding, as their lord.
This is that Homer, of all bards supreme:
Flaccus the next in satire’s vein excelling;
The third is Naso; Lucan is the last.
Because they all that appellation own,
With which the voice singly accosted me,
Honouring they greet me thus, and well they judge.”

As in large troops
And multitudinous, when winter reigns,
The starlings on their wings are borne abroad;
So bears the tyrannous gust those evil souls.

As doves
By fond desire invited, on wide wings
And firm, to their sweet nest returning home,
Cleave the air, wafted by their will along;
Thus issu’d from that troop, where Dido ranks,
They through the ill air speeding; with such force
My cry prevail’d by strong affection urg’d.

“No greater grief than to remember days
Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand! That kens
Thy learn’d instructor. Yet so eagerly
If thou art bent to know the primal root,
From whence our love gat being, I will do,
As one, who weeps and tells his tale.