Page:Divine Comedy (Longfellow 1867) v1.djvu/139

As God may let thee, Reader, gather fruit
From this thy reading, think now for thyself 20
How I could ever keep my face unmoistened,
When our own image near me I beheld,
Distorted so, the weeping of the eyes
Along the fissure bathed the hinder parts.
Truly I wept, leaning upon a peak 25
Of the hard crag, so that my Escort said
To me: "Art thou, too, of the other fools?
Here pity lives when it is wholly dead;
Who is a greater reprobate than he
Who feels compassion at the doom divine? 30
Lift up, lift up thy head, and see for whom
Opened the earth before the Thebans' eyes;
Wherefore they all cried: 'Whither rushest thou,
Amphiaraus? Why dost leave the war?'
And downward ceased he not to fall amain 35
As far as Minos, who lays hold on all.
See, he has made a bosom of his shoulders!
Because he wished to see too far before him
Behind he looks, and backward makes his way:
Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed, 40
When from a male a female he became,
His members being all of them transformed;