I wept not, so to stone within I grew. - Dante Alighieri

F. CARY, M.A. HELL
OR THE INFERNO Part 3. LIST OF CANTOS Canto 5
Canto 6
CANTO V FROM the first circle I descended thus
Down to the second, which, a lesser space
Embracing, so much more of grief contains
Provoking bitter moans. There, Minos stands
Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all
Who enter, strict examining the crimes,

Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from The Eternal.

those cries rose from among the twisted roots
through which the spirits of the damned were slinking
to hide from us. Therefore my Master said:
'If you break off a twig, what you will learn
will drive what you are thinking from your head.'

Puzzled, I raised my hand a bit and slowly
broke off a branchlet from an enormous thorn:
and the great trunk of it cried: 'Why do you break me?'

And after blood had darkened all the bowl
of the wound, it cried again: 'Why do you tear me?
Is there no pity left in any soul?

Men we were, and now we are changed to sticks;
well might your hand have been more merciful
were we no more than souls of lice and ticks.'

As a green branch with one end all aflame
will hiss and sputter sap out of the other
as the air escapes- so from that trunk there came

words and blood together, gout by gout.
Startled, I dropped the branch that I was holding
and stood transfixed by fear,...