Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/93

Rh A little farther on the Centaur stopped

Above a folk, who far down as the throat

Seemed from that boiling stream to issue forth.

A shade he showed us on one side alone,

Saying: "He cleft asunder in God's bosom

The heart that still upon the Thames is honored."

Then people saw I, who from out the river

Lifted their heads and also all the chest;

And many among these I recognized.

Thus ever more and more grew shallower

That blood, so that the feet alone it covered;

And there across the moat our passage was.

"Even as thou here upon this side beholdest

The boiling stream, that aye diminishes,"

The Centaur said, "I wish thee to believe

That on this other more and more declines

Its bed, until it reunites itself

Where it behoveth tyranny to groan.

Justice divine, upon this side, is goading

That Attila, who was a scourge on earth,

And Pyrrhus, and Sextus; and forever milks

The tears which with the boiling it unseals

In Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo,

Who made upon the highways so much war."

Then back he turned, and passed again the ford.