Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/104

84 Then he turned round to me with better lip,

Saying: "One of the Seven Kings was he

Who Thebes besieged, and held, and seems to hold

God in disdain, and little seems to prize him;

But, as I said to him, his own despites

Are for his breast the fittest ornaments.

Now follow me, and mind thou do not place

As yet thy feet upon the burning sand,

But always keep them close unto the wood."

Speaking no word, we came to where there gushes

Forth from the wood a little rivulet,

Whose redness makes my hair still stand on end.

As from the Bulicame springs the brooklet,

The sinful women later share among them,

So downward through the sand it went its way.

The bottom of it, and both sloping banks,

Were made of stone, and the margins at the side;

Whence I perceived that there the passage was.

"In all the rest which I have shown to thee

Since we have entered in within the gate

Whose threshold unto no one is denied,

Nothing has been discovered by thine eyes

So notable as is the present river,

Which all the little flames above it quenches."