CANTO XXX.

WHEN Juno, for the cause of Semelè,
Was so incensed with all of Theban strain,
As once and more she proved herself to be;
Such frenzy kindled Athamas's brain,

That toward him as he saw his wife to make,
On each arm freighted with his children twain,
He cried, "Spread out the nets, that I may take
The lioness and whelps in passage there;
And then began his pitiless claws to shake,

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And took one, who the name Learchus bare,

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And whirled him round, and dashed him on a stone, Then drowned she with herself her other care, And when vicissitude had overthrown

The all-presuming Trojans' high-proud state, And quelled the kingdom and the king in one;

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Hecuba sad, captived, and desolate,

When dead she had seen Polyxena before,

And found upon the sands the lifeless weight,
Ah woful woman, of her Polydore,

Of reason reft, she barked out like a hound,
Her mind was wrung with agony so sore.

But nor in Troy nor Thebes were ever found
The savage furies, that could so prevail,

Or human members, or a beast's to wound,

Like as I saw two naked spirits pale

Run biting, in such fashion as displays
The boar who breaks from his confining pale;
And one has reached Capocchio, and lays

Teeth on his neck, and hauling him, has made,
By starts, the firm-set ground his belly graze.
Thereat the Aretine, who trembling stayed,

Said, "Yonder goblin's Gianni Schicchi, who Goes raving, trimming thus each other shade." "O,” said I, "may the other of the two

Not set his fangs on thee, nor let it cost

Thee pains to name him, ere he start from view."

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"That is," he answered me, "the old-world ghost,

Abominable Myrrha, who became

Her father's lover, with a love that crost

The bounds of fitness. To his couch she came,

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In herself counterfeiting other's make,

As he who quits us there, with equal blame,
Endured Buoso Donâti's form to take,
And willed, accrediting the will aright,
For the first lady of the stud her sake.”
Now after those mad two were out of sight,

On whom mine eyes had been so firmly bent,
I turned them on the misborn others quite,
And saw one that a lute's shape would present,

If only he should have his groin cut straight
From off the side, on which a man is rent.
The direful dropsy, which so disparate

Makes every limb with humors indigest,
That face to paunch is not commensurate,
Made his two lips as far apart to rest

As in the hectic patient, who from thirst Turns upward one, the other toward his chest.

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"O ye that walk within this world accurst,
And why I wot not, from all penance free,
Attend and look," he thus addrest us first,
"On Master Adam and his misery.

I had enough on earth of all my will,
And now one drop of water faileth me.
The brooks that gush from every greenwood hill
In Casentine toward Arno, keeping fresh,
And cool, and soft, their channels, haunt me still,
And haunt not vainly, for their semblance nesh,

Doth much more parch me than the maladies,
That so impoverish my face in flesh.

The rigid justice, which my frame so dries,

Takes order from the place where I committed
My crime, to crowd the issues of my sighs.
There is Romêna, there I counterfeited

The metal that the Baptist's mark should owe,
For which I have in fire my body quitted;
Though could I see but here the soul in woe
Of Guido, Alexander, or their brother,
I'd not for Branda spring the sight forego.

And one's already come, if we no other

Than true accounts from those mad runners get;

What helps it me, that have my limbs in tether?
Had I had so much lightness in me yet,

That but an inch an age I could have stirred,
Myself upon this path I would have set,

And sought him out amongst this nation blurred,
For all that half a mile may be within
Their breadth, and full eleven miles them engird.
Through these am I with such a cursed kin,

They did to beat those florins make me fain,
Which had three carats of alloy put ir."

I asked him, "Who are those downstricken twain,
That like bathed hands in winter I discern
To smoke, who close to thy right flank remain?”
"I found them so, nor have they given one turn,”
He answered, "since I rained among this clique,
And shall not haply for an hour eterne:

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Sinon is one, from Troy a perjured Greek;

The other that false wife, who Joseph blamed;

The broiling fever makes them so to reek."