The Seventh Circle. The Third Ring
Violence against Nature. Sodomites
One of the hard embankments bears us now,
and overhead the brook’s mist shades them so,
that from the fire it saves the stream and banks.
Such bulwarks as, to keep the sea away,
the Flemings make between Witsand and Bruges,
through fearing lest the high-tide break upon them;
and as the Paduans make along the Brenta,
their villages and strongholds to defend,
ere Chiarentana feel the summer heat;
in such a way were those embankments made,
although the master did not make them there
so high or thick, whoe’er he may have been.
So far we were already from the wood,
that I could not have seen just where it was,
even had I turned around to look behind,
when we a band of spirits met, who came
along the bank, each one of whom looked hard
at us, as in the evening one is wont
to look at people, when the moon is new;
and toward us they were knitting close their brows,
as an old tailor at his needle’s eye.
When by that gathering I had thus been eyed,
one of them, who had recognized me, seizing
my garment’s hem, exclaimed: “How wonderful!”
And I, when toward me he had stretched his arm,
fastened upon his roasted face mine eyes,
so that, though blistered, it did not prevent
mine intellect from recognizing him;
and downward having bent my face toward his,
I answered him: “Are you here, Ser Brunetto?”
And that one: “O my son, be not displeased
should Brunetto Latini a little way
turn back with thee, and let the troop go on.”
“I beg you to with all my power;” said I,
“and if you ’d have me sit with you, I will,
if it please that one; for with him I go.”
“O son,” he said, “whoever of this herd
stands still at all, lies prone a hundred years,
nor shields himself when smitten by the fire.
Therefore go on; I ’ll follow at thy skirts,
and then I ’ll join again my company,
which goes bewailing its eternal loss.”
I dared not from the path descend, to go
upon his level there; but held my head
bowed down, like one who walks in reverence.
And he began: “What fortune or what fate
before thy last day leadeth thee down here,
and who is he that showeth thee the way?”
I answered him: “When in the life serene
up yonder, in a vale I lost my way,
before my age had rounded out its noon.
Thereon I turned my back but yestermorn;
this one, as I returned to it, appeared
to me, and o’er this path now leads me home.”
And he to me: “If thine own star thou follow,
thou canst not fail to reach a glorious port,
if in the lovely life I judged aright;
and had I not so prematurely died,
I, seeing Heaven so well disposed toward thee,
had given…
