Данте Алигьери – The Divine Comedy / Божественная комедия (страница 40)

Such as befits to cover him and me.

85 New Jason will he be, of whom we read

In Maccabees; and as his king was pliant,

So he who governs France shall be to this one.”

I do not know if I were here too bold,

That him I answered only in this metre:

90 “I pray thee tell me now how great a treasure

Our Lord demanded of Saint Peter first,

Before he put the keys into his keeping?

Truly he nothing asked but 'Follow me.'

Nor Peter nor the rest asked of Matthias

95 Silver or gold, when he by lot was chosen

Unto the place the guilty soul had lost.

Therefore stay here, for thou art justly punished,

And keep safe guard o'er the ill-gotten money,

Which caused thee to be valiant against Charles.

100 And were it not that still forbids it me

The reverence for the keys superlative

Thou hadst in keeping in the gladsome life,

I would make use of words more grievous still;

Because your avarice afflicts the world,

105 Trampling the good and lifting the depraved.

The Evangelist you Pastors had in mind,

When she who sitteth upon many waters

To fornicate with kings by him was seen;

The same who with the seven heads was born,

110 And power and strength from the ten horns received,

So long as virtue to her spouse was pleasing.

Ye have made yourselves a god of gold and silver;

And from the idolater how differ ye,

Save that he one, and ye a hundred worship?

115 Ah, Constantine! of how much ill was mother,

Not thy conversion, but that marriage dower

Which the first wealthy Father took from thee!”

And while I sang to him such notes as these,

Either that anger or that conscience stung him,

120 He struggled violently with both his feet.

I think in sooth that it my Leader pleased,

With such contented lip he listened ever

Unto the sound of the true words expressed.

Therefore with both his arms he took me up,

125 And when he had me all upon his breast,

Remounted by the way where he descended.

Nor did he tire to have me clasped to him;

But bore me to the summit of the arch

Which from the fourth dike to the fifth is passage.

130 There tenderly he laid his burden down,

Tenderly on the crag uneven and steep,

That would have been hard passage for the goats:

Thence was unveiled to me another valley.

Canto XX

Of a new pain behoves me to make verses

And give material to the twentieth canto

Of the first song, which is of the submerged.

I was already thoroughly disposed

5 To peer down into the uncovered depth,

Which bathed itself with tears of agony;

And people saw I through the circular valley,

Silent and weeping, coming at the pace

Which in this world the Litanies assume.

10 As lower down my sight descended on them,

Wondrously each one seemed to be distorted

From chin to the beginning of the chest;

For tow'rds the reins the countenance was turned,

And backward it behoved them to advance,