Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/173

Rh Exclaiming: "Where can Cianfa have remained?"

Whence I, so that the Leader might attend,

Upward from chin to nose my finger laid.

If thou art, Reader, slow now to believe

What I shall say, it will no marvel be,

For I who saw it hardly can admit it.

As I was holding raised on them my brows,

Behold! a serpent with six feet darts forth

In front of one, and fastens wholly on him.

With middle feet it bound him round the paunch,

And with the forward ones his arms it seized;

Then thrust its teeth through one cheek and the other;

The hindermost it stretched upon his thighs,

And put its tail through in between the two,

And up behind along the reins outspread it.

Ivy was never fastened by its barbs

Unto a tree so, as this horrible reptile

Upon the other's limbs entwined its own.

Then they stuck close, as if of heated wax

They had been made, and intermixed their color;

Nor one nor other seemed now what he was;

E'en as proceedeth on before the flame

Upward along the paper a brown color,

Which is not black as yet, and the white dies.