Данте Алигьери – The Divine Comedy / Божественная комедия (страница 29)

So that the rain seems not to ripen him?”

And he himself, who had become aware

50 That I was questioning my Guide about him,

Cried: “Such as I was living, am I, dead.

If Jove should weary out his smith, from whom

He seized in anger the sharp thunderbolt,

Wherewith upon the last day I was smitten,

55 And if he wearied out by turns the others

In Mongibello at the swarthy forge,

Vociferating, 'Help, good Vulcan, help!'

Even as he did there at the fight of Phlegra,

And shot his bolts at me with all his might,

60 He would not have thereby a joyous vengeance.”

Then did my Leader speak with such great force,

That I had never heard him speak so loud:

“O Capaneus, in that is not extinguished

Thine arrogance, thou punished art the more;

65 Not any torment, saving thine own rage,

Would be unto thy fury pain complete.”

Then he turned round to me with better lip,

Saying: “One of the Seven Kings was he

Who Thebes besieged, and held, and seems to hold

70 God in disdain, and little seems to prize him;

But, as I said to him, his own despites

Are for his breast the fittest ornaments.

Now follow me, and mind thou do not place

As yet thy feet upon the burning sand,

75 But always keep them close unto the wood.”

Speaking no word, we came to where there gushes

Forth from the wood a little rivulet,

Whose redness makes my hair still stand on end.

As from the Bulicame springs the brooklet,

80 The sinful women later share among them,

So downward through the sand it went its way.

The bottom of it, and both sloping banks,

Were made of stone, and the margins at the side;

Whence I perceived that there the passage was.

85 “In all the rest which I have shown to thee

Since we have entered in within the gate

Whose threshold unto no one is denied,

Nothing has been discovered by thine eyes

So notable as is the present river,

90 Which all the little flames above it quenches.”

These words were of my Leader; whence I prayed him

That he would give me largess of the food,

For which he had given me largess of desire.

“In the mid-sea there sits a wasted land,”

95 Said he thereafterward, “whose name is Crete,

Under whose king the world of old was chaste.

There is a mountain there, that once was glad

With waters and with leaves, which was called Ida;

Now 'tis deserted, as a thing worn out.

100 Rhea once chose it for the faithful cradle

Of her own son; and to conceal him better,

Whene'er he cried, she there had clamours made.

A grand old man stands in the mount erect,

Who holds his shoulders turned tow'rds Damietta,

105 And looks at Rome as if it were his mirror.

His head is fashioned of refined gold,

And of pure silver are the arms and breast;

Then he is brass as far down as the fork.

From that point downward all is chosen iron,

110 Save that the right foot is of kiln-baked clay,

And more he stands on that than on the other.

Each part, except the gold, is by a fissure