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(From Purgatory, Canto XIV) Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
AND I: “Through midst of Tuscany there wanders | |
| A streamlet that is born in Falterona, | |
| And not a hundred miles of course suffice it; | |
| From thereupon do I this body bring. | |
| To tell you who I am were speech in vain, | 5 |
| Because my name as yet makes no great noise.” | |
| “If well thy meaning I can penetrate | |
| With intellect of mine,” then answered me | |
| He who first spake, “thou speakest of the Arno.” | |
| And said the other to him: “Why concealed | 10 |
| This one the appellation of that river, | |
| Even as a man doth of things horrible?” | |
| And thus the shade that questioned was of this | |
| Himself acquitted: “I know not; but truly | |
| ’T is fit the name of such a valley perish; | 15 |
| For from its fountain-head (where is so pregnant | |
| The Alpine mountain whence is cleft Peloro | |
| That in few places it that mark surpasses) | |
| To where it yields itself in restoration | |
| Of what the heaven doth of the sea dry up, | 20 |
| Whence have the rivers that which goes with them, | |
| Virtue is like an enemy avoided | |
| By all, as is a serpent, through misfortune | |
| Of place, or through bad habit that impels them; | |
| On which account have so transformed their nature | 25 |
| The dwellers in that miserable valley, | |
| It seems that Circe had them in her pasture. | |
| Mid ugly swine, 1 of acorns worthier | |
| Than other food for human use created, | |
| It first directeth its impoverished way. | 30 |
| Curs 2 findeth it thereafter, coming downward, | |
| More snarling than their puissance demands, | |
| And turns from them disdainfully its muzzle. | |
| It goes on falling, and the more it grows, | |
| The more it finds the dogs becoming wolves, 3 | 35 |
| This maledict and misadventurous ditch. | |
| Descended then through many a hollow gulf, | |
| It findeth foxes 4 so replete with fraud, | |
| They fear no cunning that may master them. | |
| Nor will I cease because another hears me; | 40 |
| And well ’t will be for him, if still he mind him | |
| Of what a truthful spirit to me unravels. | |
| Thy grandson I behold, who doth become | |
| A hunter of those wolves upon the bank | |
| Of the wild stream, and terrifies them all. | 45 |
| He sells their flesh, it being yet alive; | |
| Thereafter slaughters them like ancient beeves; | |
| Many of life, himself of praise, deprives. | |
| Blood-stained he issues from the dismal forest; | |
| He leaves it such, a thousand years from now | 50 |
| In its primeval state ’t is not re-wooded.” | |
