Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Gate of Hell All hope abandon, ye who enter here!
? Souls horror-chilled, aghast, that went before, How froze your hearts at this disastrous Door, Whereat your feet relu5lant, iced with fear, Might make no pause ? for now avails no tear, No prayer, no cry: but hark! for evermore Hell’s multitudinous agonising roar Bounds and rebellows from the pitfall sheer. And lo! by Acheron’s wave, unending Night Broods o'er the lost, a shapeless fearful gloom; The sulphurous smoke curls up, and here no light, Save where the fervours of the eternal pyre Glare lurid from yon ardent spheres of doom With merciless lambent heat, a foam of fire. CANTO IV. A Thunderclap awakens Dante from his sleep, during which he has been carried across Acheron. He finds himself upon the margin of the pit of Hell, so dark and deep that, gazing down, his sight cannot reach the bottom. In the First Circle there are no lamentations, but only sighs; for here are the sinless unbaptized, and with them those that died before the coming of Christianity, of whom Virgil himself is one. They suffer no torment, save that without hope they live ever in desire. Hither had once descended a Mighty One, crowned with victory, who led thence the shades of the patriarchs. And here Dante and Virgil are met by the great poets of old, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, who salute Virgil with the cry,
Honour the most high poet! and who admit Dante as sixth of their band. With them he passes into a noble castle, wherein is a great company of the illustrious dead. Here are the founders of the Roman name, from the days of Troy downward: Electra, Hector, Eneas, Latinus, Lavinia, the elder Brutus, Caesar, and others; and apart from them stands Saladin alone. Beyond are the philosophers, grouped round Aristo…
