HKB
O, what a marvel it appeared to me, When I beheld three faces on his head! The one in front, and that vermilion was;
Two were the others, that were joined with this Above the middle part of either shoulder, And they were joined together at the crest;
And the right-hand one seemed ’twixt white and yellow; The left was such to look upon as those Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward.
Underneath each came forth two mighty wings, Such as befitting were so great a bird; Sails of the sea I never saw so large.
No feathers had they, but as of a bat Their fashion was; and he was waving them, So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom.
Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed. With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel.
At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching A sinner, in the manner of a brake, So that he three of them tormented thus.
To him in front the biting was as naught Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine Utterly stripped of all the skin remained.
“That soul up there which has the greatest pain,” The Master said, “is Judas Iscariot; With head inside, he plies his legs without.
Of the two others, who head downward are, The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus; See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word.
And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius. But night is reascending, and ’tis time That we depart, for we have seen the whole.”
As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck, And he the vantage seized of time and place, And when the wings were opened wide apart,
He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides; From fell to fell descended downward then Between the thick hair and the frozen crust.
When we were come to where the thigh revolves Exactly on the thickness of the haunch, The Guide, with labour and with hard-drawn breath,
Turned round his head where he had had his legs, And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts, So that to Hell I thought we were returning.
“Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these,” The Master said, panting as one fatigued, “Must we perforce depart from so much evil.”
Then through the opening of a rock he issued, And down upon the margin seated me; Then tow’rds me he outstretched his wary step.
I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see Lucifer in the same way I had left him; And I beheld him upward hold his legs.
And if I then became disquieted, Let stolid people think who do not see What the point is beyond which I had passed.
“Rise up,” the Master said, “upon thy feet; The way is long, and difficult the road, And now the sun to middle-tierce returns.”
It was not any palace corridor There where we were, but dungeon natural, With floor uneven and unease of light.
“Ere from the abyss I tear myself away, My Master,” said I when I had arisen, “To draw me from an error speak a little;
Where is the ice? and how is this one fixed Thus upside down? and how in such short time From eve to morn has the sun made his transit?”
And he to me: “Thou still imaginest Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped The hair of the fell worm, who mines the world.
That side thou wast, so long as I descended; When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point To which things heavy draw from every side,
And now beneath the hemisphere art come Opposite that which overhangs the vast Dry-land, and ’neath whose cope was put to death
The Man who without sin was born and lived. Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere Which makes the other face of the Judecca.