Therein they have to rue the fraudful plan

Of the great horse, that made the fountain head
From whence the gentill blood of Rome began.

Therein they rue the art, through which the dead
Deidamia still Achilles blames,

And the Palladium there is visited

Upon them." "If, O master, in those flames,

If they can speak, I pray thee and repray," Said I, "and count I make a thousand claims, That thou wilt not refuse to me to stay

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So long as till the forked flame draws nigh;
See how I bend from eagerness that way."
"Thy prayer deserves," he said, "much praise, and I
Accept it therefore, but be thou content

That thy own tongue should lay its office by,
And leave with me to speak, for all thy bent

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I understand, because thou mayst displease Those Greeks, perchance, by terms less eloquent." 75 Then as the flame came forward by degrees

To where my guide found place and season due, I heard him giving form to sounds like these.

“O ye that in the single flame are two,

If I have merited, when life was mine,

If more or less I merited from you,

When in the world I penned the high-proud line,

Stir not, but speak that one whom I require,
Where went he out to die, and left no sign?"
Thereat the old-world flame his taller spire

Began to flicker, with a murmuring
As that of one, which fitful breezes tire;
Then to and fro his peak meandering,

As if it were the tongue he spoke withal,
Threw forth a voice, this language syllabling;
"When I took leave of Circe, who in thrall
Had kept me off Caieta 'bove a year,
Before Eneas did the strand so call,

No aged father's wretchedness, nor dear

Child's aspect, nor the love so nobly earned, That should have made Penelope's glad cheer,

Could the great passion quell with which I burned,

To get me knowledge of the globe, and be

One that the vice and worth of man had learned.

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And forth upon the deep and unshut sea

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I launched me with one boat, and that small train

Of comrades that had not forsaken me.

I saw this coast and that as far as Spain,

And as the Sardians' island, and the rest

Which that sea washes, and the Moors' domain. 105 And I and all my crew were age-opprest

And stiffened, when we reached that narrow strait,
Where Hercules his bounding columns placed,
That man should never further penetrate;

And passing now Seville upon the right,
And Ceuta toward the left of ocean's gate,
'O comrades, who to this far-west, in spite,'
Said I, 'of danger's million threats have run,
For this brief gloaming of perception's light

That we inherit still, ere life is done,

Be loth to abdicate the experience

Of yon unpeopled world behind the sun;
Consider that original from whence

Ye spring, to live not like the beasts, but strain

After all knowledge and all excellence.'

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And by this little speech I made so fain

My comrades for the voyage, that back to warn Them afterwards I might have sought in vain. And having turned our poop against the morn, We made our sails wings for the mad emprize, 125

And further ever toward the left were borne.

And now night looked on us with all the eyes
Of yonder pole, and ours had so declined,
As hardly from the ocean-floor to rise.
Five times had been rekindled, five had pined,
Since first we entered on the daring way,
That sheen by which the moon is underlined,
When there appeared to us a mountain grey
From distance, and far loftier to view
Than all which I had seen before that day.

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We joyed, and soon it gave us cause to rue,

When rose a whirlwind from that coast new-found

That on the vessel's foremost corner flew,

And thrice, with all his waters, whirled us round

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Till up our poop was lifted at the will

Of whom I name not, and our bows were drowned; Then the shut waves above my head were still."

CANTO XXVII.

Now was already stilled, and upward spired,

At

To speak no more, that flame, and from our view,

my lief poet's licence, now retired.

When following after him, another drew

Our eyes upon the summit of his cone

By a confused sound which thence it threw.

As the Sicilian bull-that by the moan

Of that man bellowed first, and this was right, Who had attempered with his file the tone Roared by the voice of the tormented wight,

So that by anguish it alone seemed rent (All copper as it was), and ransackt quite, So here, obtaining neither path nor vent

In what they issued from, those words of woe Assumed the language of their element.

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