Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/139

Rh As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit

From this thy reading, think now for thyself

How I could ever keep my face unmoistened,

When our own image near me I beheld,

Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes

Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts.

Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak

Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said

To me: "Art thou, too, of the other fools?

Here pity lives when it is wholly dead;

Who is a greater reprobate than he

Who feels compassion at the doom divine?

Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom

Opened the earth before the Thebans' eyes;

Wherefore they all cried: 'Whither rushest thou,

Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?'

And downward ceased he not to fall amain

As far as Minos, who lays hold on all.

See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders!

Because he wished to see too far before him

Behind he looks, and backward makes his way:

Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed,

When from a male a female he became,

His members being all of them transformed;