Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/168

148 Among this cruel and most dismal throng

People were running naked and affrighted,

Without the hope of hole or heliotrope.

They had their hands with serpents bound behind them;

These riveted upon their reins the tail

And head, and were in front of them entwined.

And lo! at one who was upon our side

There darted forth a serpent, which transfixed him

There where the neck is knotted to the shoulders.

Nor O so quickly e'er, nor I was written,

As he took fire, and burned; and ashes wholly

Behoved it that in falling he became.

And when he on the ground was thus destroyed,

The ashes drew together, and of themselves

Into himself they instantly returned.

Even thus by the great sages 't is confessed

The phœnix dies, and then is born again,

When it approaches its five-hundredth year;

On herb or grain it feeds not in its life,

But only on tears of incense and amomum,

And nard and myrrh are its last winding-sheet.

And as he is who falls, and knows not how,

By force of demons who to earth down drag him,

Or other oppilation that binds man,