The Gate and Vestibule of Hell
Cowards and Neutrals. Acheron
Through me one goes into the town of woe,
through me one goes into eternal pain,
through me among the people that are lost.
Justice inspired my high exalted Maker;
I was created by the Might divine,
the highest Wisdom and the primal Love.
Before me there was naught created, save
eternal things, and I eternal last;
all hope abandon, ye that enter here!
These words of gloomy color I beheld
inscribed upon the summit of a gate;
whence I: “Their meaning, Teacher, troubles me.”
And he to me, like one aware, replied:
“All fearfulness must here be left behind;
all forms of cowardice must here be dead.
We ’ve reached the place where, as I said to thee,
thou ’lt see the sad folk who have lost the Good
which is the object of the intellect.”
Then, after he had placed his hand in mine
with cheerful face, whence I was comforted,
he led me in among the hidden things.
There sighs and wails and piercing cries of woe
reverberated through the starless air;
hence I, at first, shed tears of sympathy.
Strange languages, and frightful forms of speech,
words caused by pain, accents of anger, voices
both loud and faint, and smiting hands withal,
a mighty tumult made, which sweeps around
forever in that timelessly dark air,
as sand is wont, whene’er a whirlwind blows.
And I, whose head was girt about with horror,
said: “Teacher, what is this I hear? What folk
is this, that seems so overwhelmed with woe?”
And he to me: “This wretched kind of life
the miserable spirits lead of those
who lived with neither infamy nor praise.
Commingled are they with that worthless choir
of Angels who did not rebel, nor yet
were true to God, but sided with themselves.
The heavens, in order not to be less fair,
expelled them; nor doth nether Hell receive them,
because the bad would get some glory thence.”
And I: “What is it, Teacher, grieves them so,
it causes them so loudly to lament?”
“I ’ll tell thee very briefly,” he replied.
“These have no hope of death, and so low down
is this unseeing life of theirs, that envious
they are of every other destiny.
The world allows no fame of them to live;
Mercy and Justice hold them in contempt.
Let us not talk of them; but look, and pass!”
And I, who gazed intently, saw a flag,
which, whirling, moved so swiftly that to me
contemptuous it appeared of all repose;
and after it there came so long a line
of people, that I never would have thought
that death so great a number had undone.
When some I ’d recognized, I saw and knew
the shade of him who through his cowardice
the great Refusal made. I understood
immediately, and was assured that this
the band of cowards was, who both to God
displeasing are, and to His enemies.
These wretched…
