If other cause thou deem'dst for which I smiled,
Leave it as not the true one: and believe
Those words, thou spakest of him, indeed the cause.'
Now down he bent to embrace my teacher's feet;
But he forbade him: 'Brother! do it not:
Thou art a shadow, and behold'st a shade.'
He, rising, answer'd thus: 'Now hast thou proved
The force and ardor of the love I bear thee,
When I forget we are but things of air,
And, as a substance, treat an empty shade.'"
(XXI, 106.)
On the sixth terrace Dante with five P's removed, accompanied by Virgil
sees the souls of those who sinned by gluttony. They are an emaciated
crowd obliged to pass and repass before a fruit-laden tree bedewed with
clear water from a fountain, without being able to satisfy their hunger
or quench their thirst. Voices from this tree proclaim examples of
temperance; voices from another tree equally tantalizing, declare
examples of gluttony.
"People I saw beneath it (the tree) lift their hands
And cry I know not what towards the leaves,
Like little children eager and deluded,
Who pray, and he they pray to doth not answer
But, to make very keen their appetite
Holds their desire aloft and hides it not.
Then they departed as if undeceived.
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