Not my dream but a haunting one I have been told:
Now the woeful notes begin to make themselves heard; now am I
come where much lamentation smites me. I had come into a place
mute of all light, that bellows as the sea does in a tempest, if
it be combated by opposing winds. The infernal hurricane that
never rests carries along the spirits in its rapine; whirling and
smiting it molests them. When they arrive before its rushing
blast, here are shrieks, and bewailing, and lamenting; here they
blaspheme the power divine. I understood that to such torment are
condemned the carnal sinners who subject reason to appetite. And
as their wings bear along the starlings in the cold season in a
troop large and full, so that blast the evil spirits; hither,
thither, down, up it carries them; no hope ever comforts them,
not of repose, but even of less pain.
And as the cranes go singing their lays, making in air a long
line of themselves, so saw I come, uttering wails, shades borne
along by the aforesaid strife. Wherefore I said, "Master, who are
those folk whom the black air so castigates?" "The first of these
of whom thou wishest to have knowledge," said he to me then, "was
empress of many tongues. To the vice of luxury was she so
abandoned that lust she made licit in her law, to take away the
blame she had incurred. She is Semiramis, of whom it is read that
she succeeded Ninus and had been his spouse; she held the land
which the Soldan rules. That other is she who, for love, killed
herself, and broke faith to the ashes of Sichaeus. Next is
Cleopatra, the luxurious. See Helen, for whom so long a time of
ill revolved; and see the great Achilles, who at the end fought
with love. See Paris, Tristan,--" and more than a thousand shades
he showed me with his finger, and named them, whom love had
parted from our life.
After I had heard my Teacher name the dames of eld and the
cavaliers, pity overcame me, and I was well nigh bewildered. I
began, "Poet, willingly would I speak with those two that go
together, and seem to be so light upon the wind." And he to me,
"Thou shalt see when they shall be nearer to us, and do thou then
pray them by that love which leads them, and they will come."
Soon as the wind sways them toward us I lifted my voice, "O weary
souls, come speak to us, if One forbid it not."
(Taken fromDante's Inferno)
