Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/98

78 Then blew the trunk amain, and afterward

The wind was into such a voice converted:

"With brevity shall be replied to you.

When the exasperated soul abandons

The body whence it rent itself away,

Minos consigns it to the seventh abyss.

It falls into the forest, and no part

Is chosen for it; but where Fortune hurls it,

There like a grain of spelt it germinates.

It springs a sapling, and a forest tree;

The Harpies, feeding then upon its leaves,

Do pain create, and for the pain an outlet.

Like others for our spoils shall we return;

But not that any one may them revest,

For 't is not just to have what one casts off.

Here we shall drag them, and along the dismal

Forest our bodies shall suspended be,

Each to the thorn of his molested shade."

We were attentive still unto the trunk,

Thinking that more it yet might wish to tell us,

When by a tumult we were overtaken,

In the same way as he is who perceives

The boar and chase approaching to his stand,

Who hears the crashing of the beasts and branches;