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| OUT of this town there riseth a high hill, | |
| About whose sides live many anchorites | |
| In cells cut in the rock with curious skill, | |
| And laid in terraces along the heights; | |
| This holy hill with that where stands the town | 5 |
| The ancient Roman aqueduct unites; | |
| And passing o’er the vale her chain of stone | |
| Cuts it in two with line indelible; | |
| A work right marvellous to gaze upon. | |
| To one o those grave hermits there befell | 10 |
| A curious thing, whereof the fame was new | |
| In our sojourn; the which I here will tell. | |
| He found himself when night had shed her dew, | |
| In a long valley, narrow, deep, and straight, | |
| Like that which lay all day beneath his view. | 15 |
| On each hand mountains rose precipitate, | |
| Whose tops for darkness he could nowise see, | |
| Though wistful that high gloom to penetrate; | |
| And through this hollow, one, who seem’d to be | |
| Of calm and quiet mien, was leading him | 20 |
| In friendly converse and society: | |
| But whom he wist not: neither could he trim | |
| Memory’s spent torch to know what things were said, | |
| No about what, in that long way and dim. | |
| But as the valley still before him spread, | 25 |
| He saw a line, that did the same divide | |
| Across in halves: which made him feel great dread. | |
| For he beheld fore burning on one side | |
| Unto the mountains from the midmost vale; | |
| On the other, ice the empire did discide, | 30 |
| Fed from the opposing hill with snow and hail. | |
| So dreary was that haunt of fire and cold, | |
| That nought on earth to equal might avail. | |
| Fire ended where began the frozen mould; | |
| Both in extreme at their conjunction: | 35 |
| So close were they, no severance might to told: | |
| No thinnest line of separation, | |
| Like that which is by painter drawn to part | |
| One color in his piece from other one, | |
| So fine as that which held these realms apart. | 40 |
| And through the vale the souls of men in pain | |
| From one to the other side did leap and dart, | |
| From heat to cold, from, cold to heat again: | |
| And not an instant through their anguish great | |
| In either element might they remain. | 45 |
| So great the multitude thus toss’d by fate, | |
| That as a mist they seem’d in the dark air. | |
| No shrimper, who at half-tide takes his freight, | |
| When high his pole-net seaward he doth bear, | |
| Ever beheld so thick a swarm to leap | 50 |
| out of the brine on evening still and fair, | |
| Waking a mist mile-long ’twixt shore and deep. | |
| Now while his mind was fill’d with ruth and fear, | |
| And with great horror stood his eyeballs steep, | |
| Deeming that hell before him did appear, | 55 |
| And souls in torment toss’d from brink to brink: | |
| Upon him look’d the one who set him there, | |
| And said: “This is not hell, as thou dost think, | |
| Neither those torments of the cold and heat | |
| Are those wherewith the damned wail and shrink.” | 60 |
| And therewith from that place he turn’d his feet; | |
| And sometime on they walk’d, the while this man | |
| In anguish shuddering did the effect repeat: | |
| Such spasms of horror through his body ran, | |
| Walking with stumbling, and with glazed eyes | 65 |
| Whither he knew not led, ghastly and wan. | |
| Then said the other: “In those agonies | |
| No more than hell’s beginning know: behold, | |
| The doom o hell itself is otherwise.” | |
| Therewith he drew aside his vesture’s fold, | 70 |
| And show’d his heart: than fire more hot it burn’d | |
| One half: the rest was ice than ice more cold. | |
| A moment show’d he this: and then he turn’d, | |
| And in his going all the vision went: | |
| And he, who in his mind these things discern’d, | 75 |
| Came to himself with long astonishment. | |
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