XXI.
This flying and that following, the two
Kept a close path which widened still, and they
Piercing that forest, issued forth to view
On a wide meadow, which without it lay.
—No more of this. Orlando I pursue,
That bore Cymosco’s thunder-bolt away;
And this had in the deepest bottom drowned,
That never more the mischief might be found.
XXII.
But with small boot: for the impious enemy
Of human nature, taught the bolt to frame,
After the shaft, which darting from the sky
Pierces the cloud and comes to ground in flame,
Who, when he tempted Eve to eat and die
With the apple, hardly wrought more scathe and shame,
Some deal before, or in our grandsires’ day,
Guided a necromancer where it lay.
XXIII.
More than a hundred fathom buried so,
Where hidden it had lain a mighty space,
The infernal tool by magic from below
Was fished and born amid the German race;
Who, by one proof and the other, taught to know
Its powers, and he who plots for our disgrace,
The demon, working on their weaker wit,
At last upon its fatal purpose hit.
