Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/228

208 We passed still farther onward, where the ice

Another people ruggedly enswathes,

Not downward turned, but all of them reversed.

Weeping itself there does not let them weep,

And grief that finds a barrier in the eyes

Turns itself inward to increase the anguish;

Because the earliest tears a cluster form,

And, in the manner of a crystal visor,

Fill all the cup beneath the eyebrow full.

And notwithstanding that, as in a callus,

Because of cold all sensibility

Its station had abandoned in my face,

Still it appeared to me I felt some wind;

Whence I: "My Master, who sets this in motion?

Is not below here every vapor quenched?"

Whence he to me: "Full soon shalt thou be where

Thine eye shall answer make to thee of this,

Seeing the cause which raineth down the blast.

And one of the wretches of the frozen crust

Cried out to us: "O souls so merciless

That the last post is given unto you,

Lift from mine eyes the rigid veils, that I

May vent the sorrow which impregns my heart

A little, e'er the weeping recongeal."