Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 20.djvu/17

THE DIVINE COMEDY

INFERNO [HELL] CANTO I

ARGUMENT. The writer, having lost his way in a gloomy forest, and being hindered by certain wild beasts from ascending a mountain, is met by Virgil, who promises to show him the punishments of Hell, and afterward of Purgatory; and that he shall then be conducted by Beatrice into Paradise. He follows the Roman poet.

IN the midway 1 of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell, It were no easy task, how savage wild That forest, how robust and rough its growth, Which to remember only, my dismay Renews, in bitterness not far from death. Yet, to discourse of what there good befel, All else will I relate discover'd there.

How first I enter'd it I scarce can say, Such sleepy dulness in that instant weigh'd My senses down, when the true path I left; But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where closed The valley that had pierced my heart with dread, I look'd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad Already vested with that planet's beam, 2 Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.

Then was a little respite to the fear, That in my heart's recesses deep had lain All of that night, so pitifully past: And as a man, with difficult short breath, Forespent with toiling, 'scaped from sea to shore, Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands

1 "In the midway." The era of the poem is intended by these words to be fixed to the thirty-fifth year of the poet's age, A.D. 1300. In his Convito, human life is compared to an arch or bow, the highest point of which is, in those well framed by nature, at their thirty-fifth year.

2 "That planet's beam." The sun.