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(From Inferno, Canto V) Translated by Lord Byron
“THE LAND where I was born sits by the seas, | |
| Upon that shore to which the Po descends, | |
| With all his followers, in search of peace. | |
| Love, which the gentle heart soon apprehends, | |
| Seized him for the fair person which was ta’en | 5 |
| From me, and me even yet the mode offends. | |
| Love, who to none beloved to love again | |
| Remits, seized me with wish to please, so strong, | |
| That, as thou seest, yet, yet it doth remain. | |
| Love to one death conducted us along, | 10 |
| But Cainà waits for him our life who ended”: | |
| These were the accents uttered by her tongue. | |
| Since I first listened to these souls offended, | |
| I bowed my visage, and so kept it till— | |
| “What think’st thou?” said the bard; when I unbended, | 15 |
| And recommenced: “Alas! unto such ill | |
| How many sweet thoughts, what strong ecstasies, | |
| Led these their evil fortune to fulfil!” | |
| And then I turned unto their side my eyes, | |
| And said, “Francesca, thy sad destinies | 20 |
| Have made me sorrow till the tears arise. | |
| But tell me, in the season of sweet sighs, | |
| By what and how thy love to passion rose, | |
| So as his dim desires to recognize?” | |
| Then she to me: “The greatest of all woes | 25 |
| Is to remind us of our happy days | |
| In misery, and that thy teacher knows. | |
| But if to learn our passion’s first root preys | |
| Upon thy spirit with such sympathy, | |
| I will do even as he who weeps and says. | 30 |
| We read one day for pastime, seated nigh, | |
| Of Lancilot, how love enchained him too. | |
| We were alone, quite unsuspiciously. | |
| But oft our eyes met, and our cheeks in hue | |
| All o’er discolored by that reading were: | 35 |
| But one point only wholly us o’erthrew; | |
| When we read the long-sighed-for smile of her, | |
| To be thus kissed by such devoted lover, | |
| He who from me can be divided ne’er | |
| Kissed my mouth, trembling in the act all over. | 40 |
| Accursed was the book and he who wrote! | |
| That day no further leaf we did uncover. | |
| While thus one spirit told us of their lot, | |
| The other wept, so that with pity’s thralls | |
| I swooned as if by death I had been smote, | 45 |
| And fell down even as a dead body falls.” | |
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