Part 11

Say where they are, and cause that I may know them; For great desire constraineth me to learn If Heaven doth sweeten them, or Hell envenom.”

And he: “They are among the blacker souls; A different sin downweighs them to the bottom; If thou so far descendest, thou canst see them.

But when thou art again in the sweet world, I pray thee to the mind of others bring me; No more I tell thee and no more I answer.”

Then his straightforward eyes he turned askance, Eyed me a little, and then bowed his head; He fell therewith prone like the other blind.

And the Guide said to me: “He wakes no more This side the sound of the angelic trumpet; When shall approach the hostile Potentate,

Each one shall find again his dismal tomb, Shall reassume his flesh and his own figure, Shall hear what through eternity re-echoes.”

So we passed onward o’er the filthy mixture Of shadows and of rain with footsteps slow, Touching a little on the future life.

Wherefore I said: “Master, these torments here, Will they increase after the mighty sentence, Or lesser be, or will they be as burning?”

And he to me: “Return unto thy science, Which wills, that as the thing more perfect is, The more it feels of pleasure and of pain.

Albeit that this people maledict To true perfection never can attain, Hereafter more than now they look to be.”

Round in a circle by that road we went, Speaking much more, which I do not repeat; We came unto the point where the descent is;

There we found Plutus the great enemy.

Inferno: Canto VII

“Pape Satan, Pape Satan, Aleppe!” Thus Plutus with his clucking voice began; And that benignant Sage, who all things knew,

Said, to encourage me: “Let not thy fear Harm thee; for any power that he may have Shall not prevent thy going down this crag.”

Then he turned round unto that bloated lip, And said: “Be silent, thou accursed wolf; Consume within thyself with thine own rage.

Not causeless is this journey to the abyss; Thus is it willed on high, where Michael wrought Vengeance upon the proud adultery.”

Even as the sails inflated by the wind Involved together fall when snaps the mast, So fell the cruel monster to the earth.

Thus we descended into the fourth chasm, Gaining still farther on the dolesome shore Which all the woe of the universe insacks.

Justice of God, ah! who heaps up so many New toils and sufferings as I beheld? And why doth our transgression waste us so?

As doth the billow there upon Charybdis, That breaks itself on that which it encounters, So here the folk must dance their roundelay.

Here saw I people, more than elsewhere, many, On one side and the other, with great howls, Rolling weights forward by main force of chest.

They clashed together, and then at that point Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde, Crying, “Why keepest?” and, “Why squanderest thou?”

Thus they returned along the lurid circle On either hand unto the opposite point, Shouting their shameful metre evermore.

Then each, when he arrived there, wheeled about Through his half-circle to another joust; And I, who had my heart pierced as it were,

Exclaimed: “My Master, now declare to me What people these are, and if all were clerks, These shaven crowns upon the left of us.”

And he to me: “All of them were asquint In intellect in the first life, so much That there with measure they no spending made.

Clearly enough their voices bark it forth, Whene’er they reach the two points of the circle, Where sunders them the opposite defect.