And as there shot into this prison drear
A little sunbeam, by whose light I caught
My look upon four faces mirrored clear;
Both of my hands I bit, by grief o'erwrought.
Then suddenly they rose as if they thought
I did it hungering; 'Less our misery,'
They cried, 'Should'st thou on us feed, who are nought
But creatures vested in our flesh by thee:
Then strip away the weeds that still thine own must be.'
It calmed me to make them feel less their fate;
Two days we spent in silence all forlorn;
Earth, Earth, oh wherefore wert thou obdurate,
And would'st not open! On the following morn
Gaddo, before my face, from life was torn!
'Can you not help me, father?' first he cried,
And perished; then, I saw the younger born,
Three, one by one, fall ere the sixth day sped--
Plainly as you see me, and this accursed head.
'Already blind, I fondly grope my way
To them, and for three days their names I call
After their death; then famine found its prey
And did what sorrow could not.' This was all
He said."
(XXXIII, 35.)
And now we come with the poets to the lowest depths of Hell, where we
see imprisoned in ice Lucifer, huge and hideous. As we gaze on mankind's
enemy, an archangel fallen and punished for sin, the words of Isaias
come to mind: "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, who did'st
rise in the morning! How art thou fallen to the earth, that did'st wound
the nations.
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