Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/200

180 Divers lamentings pierced me through and through,

Which with compassion had their arrows barbed,

Whereat mine ears I covered with my hands.

What pain would be, if from the hospitals

Of Valdichiana, 'twixt July and September,

And of Maremma and Sardinia

All the diseases in one moat were gathered,

Such was it here, and such a stench came from it

As from putrescent limbs is wont to issue.

We had descended on the furthest bank

From the long crag, upon the left hand still,

And then more vivid was my power of sight

Down tow'rds the bottom, where the ministress

Of the high Lord, Justice infallible,

Punishes forgers, which she here records.

I do not think a sadder sight to see

Was in Ægina the whole people sick,

(When was the air so full of pestilence,

The animals, down to the little worm,

All fell, and afterwards the ancient people,

According as the poets have affirmed,

Were from the seed of ants restored again,)

Than was it to behold through that dark valley

The spirits languishing in divers heaps.