Hence homicides, and all who smite in hate,

Reavers and robbers, suffer punishment
Through belt the first, in bands multiplicate.
A man against himself is violent,

Or his own substance; therefore must all they

In belt the next without a hope repent,
Who from your world shall make a wilful way,

Who set at stake and squander land and fee,
And mourn when they have reason to be gay.
A man doth violence to the deity,

Whose heart denieth or misprizeth him,
Or spurneth nature, and her bounties free.
The less belt, therefore, sets a brand on them
Who share the sins of Sodom and Cahors,
And speakers in their hearts, who God contemn.
The fraud, at which all conscience feels remorse,
A man may use to those who shall confide

In him, or where his credit hath no force.

The former mode seems only to divide

The knot of love, which nature made whilere,

And therefore in the second circle hide

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Fawners and hypocrites, and thieves are Enchanters, counterfeits, simoniacs,

Pandars, embezzlers, and all such foul ge
A man in second mode that love forsakes
Which nature gave, and that whose ad

A link of confidence peculiar makes.
And hence the inmost circle, at the core
Of the creation, by the seat of Dis,
Him that betrays consumes for evermore.
"Master," said I, "full clearly up to this

Proceeds thy speech, and draws the lin The people and the parts of this abyss. But tell me, those in the fat marshes flung

By the rain beat, and by the whirlwind And those who meet with such malicious Why are they not within the strongholds Chastised, if wrath of God upon them And if not, why are they so ill bested?" "Now what hallucination leads astray Thy wit so far beyond its wont?" said "Or whither is thy mind else turned awa

Dost thou not bear the words in memory

In which thy ethics treat the frames of mind That heaven will not allow, in number three? Incontinence, and malice, and the blind

Bestiality, and how incontinence

Offends God least, and brings least blame behind?
If thou regard this verdict well, and thence

Proceed to call to mind what souls are those
That up without receive their chastisements,
Thou❜lt plainly see, why they in separate rows

From yonder felons stand, and by what right God's justice pounds them with less angry blows." 90

"O Sun, that healest every clouded sight,

Thy solving so contenteth me," said I,

"That doubt or knowledge works me one delight.

But turn a little back, and tell me why

Thou saidst above, that usury offends

The God of goodness, and this knot untie."

"Philosophy to whosoe'er attends

Makes known," said he, "not in one only part That Nature, in her goings-out, depends

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On the divine goodness, and on his art; And if thy physics, but a little way From the first pages, thou wilt lay to he Your art the latter follows where she ma

As pupil doth his master; whence we That art is God's grand-daughter, so to Now if thou call thy Genesis to mind

From the beginning, it behoves man h To earn his living and advance his kind. But usurers take other means, and hence Both by herself and delegate disdain This nature, whom they grudge their con But follow now, I would no more remain

For now the Fishes on the horizon pee And quite above the north-west lies the And far out yonder we descend the steep

CANTO XII.

THE place, where to descend this bank we drew,
Was alpine-like, and with an object blent

That

every beholder would eschew;

As is that landslip, ere you come to Trent,

That smote the flank of Adige, through some stay

Sinking beneath it, or by earthquake rent;

For from the summit, where of old it lay

Plainwards, the broken rock unto the feet

Of one above it, might afford some way;
Such path adown this precipice we meet ;
And o'er the broken hollow, at the brow,
Lay stretched along the infamy of Crete,
Engendered in the simulated cow;

Who bit himself on seeing us, as he

With inward rage who labours.

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"What, dost thou,"

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