When through the dolorous city of damned souls The Florentine with Vergil took his way, A dismal marsh they passed, whose fetid shoals Held sinners by the myriad. Swollen and grey, Like worms that fester in the foul decay Of sweltering carrion, these bad spirits sank Chin-deep in stagnant slime and ooze that stank.
Year after year forever--year by year, Through billions of the centuries that lie Like specks of dust upon the dateless sphere Of heaven's eternity, they cankering sigh Between the black waves and the starless sky; And daily dying have no hope to gain By death or change or respite of their pain.
What was their crime, you ask? Nay, listen: "We Were sullen--sad what time we drank the light, And delicate air, that all day daintily Is cheered by sunshine; for we bore black night And murky smoke of sloth, in God's despite, Within our barren souls, by discontent From joy of all fair things and wholesome pent:
Therefore in this low Hell from jocund sight And sound He bans us; and as there we grew Pallid with idleness, so here a blight Perpetual rots with slow-corroding dew Our poisonous carcase, and a livid hue Corpse-like o'erspreads these sodden limbs that take And yield corruption to the loathly lake."
Will Hector leave me for the fatal plain, Where, fierce with vengeance for Patroclus slain, Stalks Peleus' ruthless son? Who, when thou glid'st amid the dark abodes, To hurl the spear and to revere the gods, Shall teach thine Orphan One?
Woman and wife beloved--cease thy tears; My soul is nerved--the war-clang in my ears! Be mine in life to stand Troy's bulwark!--fighting for our hearths, to go In death, exulting to the streams below, Slain for my father-land!
No more I hear thy martial footsteps fall-- Thine arms shall hang, dull trophies, on the wall-- Fallen the stem of Troy! Thou go'st where slow Cocytus wanders--where Love sinks in Lethe, and the sunless air Is dark to light and joy!
Longing and thought--yea, all I feel and think May in the silent sloth of Lethe sink, But my love not! Hark, the wild swarm is at the walls! I hear! Gird on my sword--Belov'd one, dry the tear-- Lethe for love is not!
Under Mount Etna he lies, It is slumber, it is not death; For he struggles at times to arise, And above him the lurid skies Are hot with his fiery breath.