Passages from Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell

A captain's speech to tired sailors about what humans are for.

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.’So eager did I render my companions,With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,That then I hardly could have held them back.And having turned our stern unto the morning,We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,Evermore gaining on the larboard side.

Why remembering a good year can hurt more than a bad one.

But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs,By what and in what manner Love conceded,That you should know your dubious desires?”And she to me: “There is no greater sorrowThan to be mindful of the happy timeIn misery, and that thy Teacher knows.But, if to recognise the earliest rootOf love in us thou hast so great desire,I will do even as he who weeps and speaks.

Grief so complete it leaves a father silent as stone.

And I heard locking up the under doorOf the horrible tower; whereat without a wordI gazed into the faces of my sons.I wept not, I within so turned to stone;They wept; and darling little Anselm mineSaid: ‘Thou dost gaze so, father, what doth ail thee?’Still not a tear I shed, nor answer madeAll of that day, nor yet the night thereafter,Until another sun rose on the world.

Nobody is excused from loving, and some pay for it forever.

Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize,Seized this man for the person beautifulThat was ta’en from me, and still the mode offends me.Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving,Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly,That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me;Love has conducted us unto one death;Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!”These words were borne along from them to us.

A poet admits his words may be too small for the job.

If I had rhymes both rough and stridulous,As were appropriate to the dismal holeDown upon which thrust all the other rocks,I would press out the juice of my conceptionMore fully; but because I have them not,Not without fear I bring myself to speak;For ’tis no enterprise to take in jest,To sketch the bottom of all the universe,Nor for a tongue that cries Mamma and Babbo.

A man carries his own head like a lamp, and the poet cannot explain it.

I truly saw, and still I seem to see it,A trunk without a head walk in like mannerAs walked the others of the mournful herd.And by the hair it held the head dissevered,Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern,And that upon us gazed and said: “O me!”It of itself made to itself a lamp,And they were two in one, and one in two;How that can be, He knows who so ordains it.

Falling leaves, one at a time, and every leaf is a person.

Charon the demon, with the eyes of glede,Beckoning to them, collects them all together,Beats with his oar whoever lags behind.As in the autumn-time the leaves fall off,First one and then another, till the branchUnto the earth surrenders all its spoils;In similar wise the evil seed of AdamThrow themselves from that margin one by one,At signals, as a bird unto its lure.

The souls Hell will not even sort, because they never chose a side.

And after it there came so long a trainOf people, that I ne’er would have believedThat ever Death so many had undone.When some among them I had recognised,I looked, and I beheld the shade of himWho made through cowardice the great refusal.Forthwith I comprehended, and was certain,That this the sect was of the caitiff wretchesHateful to God and to his enemies.

A place where the darkness has a roar.

I came into a place mute of all light,Which bellows as the sea does in a tempest,If by opposing winds ’t is combated.The infernal hurricane that never restsHurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.When they arrive before the precipice,There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments,There they blaspheme the puissance divine.

A poet accuses the richest institution of his age of idolatry.

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?Ah, Constantine! of how much ill was mother,Not thy conversion, but that marriage dowerWhich the first wealthy Father took from thee!”