Данте Алигьери – The Divine Comedy / Божественная комедия (страница 17)

The walls appeared to me to be of iron.

Not without making first a circuit wide,

80 We came unto a place where loud the pilot

Cried out to us, “Debark, here is the entrance.”

More than a thousand at the gates I saw

Out of the Heavens rained down, who angrily

Were saying, “Who is this that without death

85 Goes through the kingdom of the people dead?”

And my sagacious Master made a sign

Of wishing secretly to speak with them.

A little then they quelled their great disdain,

And said: “Come thou alone, and he begone

90 Who has so boldly entered these dominions.

Let him return alone by his mad road;

Try, if he can; for thou shalt here remain,

Who hast escorted him through such dark regions.”

Think, Reader, if I was discomforted

95 At utterance of the accursed words;

For never to return here I believed.

“O my dear Guide, who more than seven times

Hast rendered me security, and drawn me

From imminent peril that before me stood,

100 Do not desert me,” said I, “thus undone;

And if the going farther be denied us,

Let us retrace our steps together swiftly.”

And that Lord, who had led me thitherward,

Said unto me: “Fear not; because our passage

105 None can take from us, it by Such is given.

But here await me, and thy weary spirit

Comfort and nourish with a better hope;

For in this nether world I will not leave thee.”

So onward goes and there abandons me

110 My Father sweet, and I remain in doubt,

For No and Yes within my head contend.

I could not hear what he proposed to them;

But with them there he did not linger long,

Ere each within in rivalry ran back.

115 They closed the portals, those our adversaries,

On my Lord's breast, who had remained without

And turned to me with footsteps far between.

His eyes cast down, his forehead shorn had he

Of all its boldness, and he said, with sighs,

120 “Who has denied to me the dolesome houses?”

And unto me: “Thou, because I am angry,

Fear not, for I will conquer in the trial,

Whatever for defence within be planned.

This arrogance of theirs is nothing new;

125 For once they used it at less secret gate,

Which finds itself without a fastening still.

O'er it didst thou behold the dead inscription;

And now this side of it descends the steep,

Passing across the circles without escort,

130 One by whose means the city shall be opened.”

Canto IX

That hue which cowardice brought out on me,

Beholding my Conductor backward turn,

Sooner repressed within him his new colour.

He stopped attentive, like a man who listens,

5 Because the eye could not conduct him far

Through the black air, and through the heavy fog.

“Still it behoveth us to win the fight,”

Began he; “Else. .Such offered us herself..

O how I long that some one here arrive!”

10 Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning

He covered up with what came afterward,