Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/71



HAT hue which cowardice brought out on me,

Beholding my Conductor backward turn,

Sooner repressed within him his new color.

He stopped attentive, like a man who listens,

Because the eye could not conduct him far

Through the black air, and through the heavy fog.

"Still it behoveth us to win the fight,"

Began he; "Else Such offered us herself

O how I long that some one here arrive!"

Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning

He covered up with what came afterward,

That they were words quite different from the first;

But none the less his saying gave me fear,

Because I carried out the broken phrase,

Perhaps to a worse meaning than he had.

"Into this bottom of the doleful conch

Doth any e'er descend from the first grade,

Which for its pain has only hope cut off?"