Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/220

200 "Ye who so strain your breasts together, tell me,"

I said, "who are you"; and they bent their necks,

And when to me their faces they had lifted,

Their eyes, which first were only moist within,

Gushed o'er the eyelids, and the frost congealed

The tears between, and locked them up again.

Clamp never bound together wood with wood

So strongly; whereat they, like two he-goats,

Butted together, so much wrath o'ercame them.

And one, who had by reason of the cold

Lost both his ears, still with his visage downward,

Said: "Why dost thou so mirror thyself in us?

If thou desire to know who these two are,

The valley whence Bisenzio descends

Belonged to them and to their father Albert.

They from one body came, and all Caïna

Thou shalt search through, and shalt not find a shade

More worthy to be fixed in gelatine;

Not he in whom were broken breast and shadow

At one and the same blow by Arthur's hand;

Focaccia not; not he who me encumbers

So with his head I see no farther forward,

And bore the name of Sassol Mascheroni;

Well knowest thou who he was, if thou art Tuscan.