| |
(From La Divina Commedia)
Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
WHEN I | |
| From Circe had departed, who concealed me | |
| More than a year there near unto Gaëta, | |
| Or ever yet Æneas named it so, | |
| Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence | 5 |
| For my old father, nor the due affection | |
| Which joyous should have made Penelope, | |
| Could overcome within me the desire | |
| I had to be experienced of the world, | |
| And of the vice and virtue of mankind; | 10 |
| But I put forth on the high open sea | |
| With one sole ship, and that small company | |
| By which I never had deserted been. | |
| Both of the shores I saw as far as Spain, | |
| Far as Morocco, and the isle of Sardes, | 15 |
| And the others which that sea bathes round about. | |
| I and my company were old and slow | |
| When at that narrow passage we arrived | |
| Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals, | |
| That man no farther onward should adventure. | 20 |
| On the right hand behind me left I Seville, | |
| And on the other already had left Ceuta. | |
| “O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand | |
| Perils,” I said, “have come unto the West, | |
| To this so inconsiderable vigil | 25 |
| Which is remaining of your senses still, | |
| Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge, | |
| Following the sun, of the unpeopled world. | |
| Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang; | |
| Ye were not made to live like unto brutes, | 30 |
| But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.” | |
| So eager did I render my companions, | |
| With this brief exhortation, for the voyage, | |
| That then I hardly could have held them back. | |
| And having turned our stern unto the morning, | 35 |
| We of the oars made wings for our mad flight, | |
| Evermore gaining on the larboard side. | |
| Already all the stars of the other pole | |
| The night beheld, and ours so very low | |
| It did not rise above the ocean floor. | 40 |
| Five times rekindled and as many quenched | |
| Had been the splendor underneath the moon, | |
| Since we had entered into the deep pass, | |
| When there appeared to us a mountain, dim | |
| From distance, and it seemed to me so high | 45 |
| As I had never any one beheld. | |
| Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping; | |
| For out of the new land a whirlwind rose, | |
| And smote upon the forepart of the ship. | |
| Three times it made her whirl with all the waters, | 50 |
| At the fourth time it made the stern uplift, | |
| And the prow downward go, as pleased Another, | |
| Until the sea above us closed again. | |
| |
