Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/49

Rh It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them;

No hope doth comfort them forevermore,

Not of repose, but even of lesser pain.

And as the cranes go chanting forth their lays,

Making in air a long line of themselves,

So saw I coming, uttering lamentations,

Shadows borne onward by the aforesaid stress.

Whereupon said I: "Master, who are those

People, whom the black air so castigates?"

"The first of those, of whom intelligence

Thou fain wouldst have," then said he unto me,

"The empress was of many languages.

To sensual vices she was so abandoned,

That lustful she made licit in her law,

To remove the blame to which she had been led.

She is Semiramis, of whom we read

That she succeeded Ninus, and was his spouse;

She held the land which now the Sultan rules.

The next is she who killed herself for love,

And broke faith with the ashes of Sichæus;

Then Cleopatra the voluptuous."

Helen I saw, for whom so many ruthless

Seasons revolved; and saw the great Achilles,

Who at the last hour combated with Love.