Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/85

Rh Whoever of your world deprives himself,

Who games, and dissipates his property,

And weepeth there, where he should jocund be.

Violence can be done the Deity,

In heart denying and blaspheming Him,

And by disdaining Nature and her bounty.

And for this reason doth the smallest round

Seal with its signet Sodom and Cahors,

And who, disdaining God, speaks from the heart.

Fraud, wherewithal is every conscience stung,

A man may practise upon him who trusts,

And him who doth no confidence imburse.

This latter mode, it would appear, dissevers

Only the bond of love which Nature makes;

Wherefore within the second circle nestle

Hypocrisy, flattery, and who deals in magic,

Falsification, theft, and simony,

Panders, and barrators, and the like filth.

By the other mode, forgotten is that love

Which Nature makes, and what is after added,

From which there is a special faith engendered.

Hence in the smallest circle, where the point is

Of the Universe, upon which Dis is seated,

Whoe'er betrays forever is consumed."