Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/183

Rh Which is remaining of your senses still,

Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,

Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;

Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,

But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.'

So eager did I render my companions,

With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,

That then I hardly could have held them back.

And having turned our stern unto the morning,

We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,

Evermore gaining on the larboard side.

Already all the stars of the other pole

The night beheld, and ours so very low

It did not rise above the ocean floor.

Five times rekindled and as many quenched

Had been the splendor underneath the moon,

Since we had entered into the deep pass,

When there appeared to us a mountain, dim

From distance, and it seemed to me so high

As I had never any one beheld.

Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping;

For out of the new land a whirlwind rose,

And smote upon the fore part of the ship.