Lost in the Dark Wood — Divine Comedy

Dante is thirty-five when he finds himself in a wood so savage that remembering it almost kills him. He cannot say how he entered. A sleepy dullness weighed his senses down at the moment he left the true path. At the mountain's foot he looks up and sees the sun on the hill's shoulders, the planet that leads wanderers. He climbs with the hinder foot still firmer than the one reaching ahead, like a man who has crawled out of the sea and cannot stop staring at the water.

A speckled panther checks him and does not vanish. Morning, the gay skin, and the sweet season fill him with hope, then a lion comes hunger-mad, and a she-wolf so lean she seems full of all wants. She has made many a land disconsolate. She drives him backward down the slope until all hope of the height is gone. While he falls back, a figure appears whose voice is faint from long disuse of speech.

The figure is Virgil, the Mantuan bard Dante has studied as a well-spring of eloquence. Dante weeps and begs rescue from the wolf. Virgil says that beast will suffer none to pass, and is never sated. Another way must be taken: through an eternal space of shrieks, then among those who dwell in fire and still hope for the blessed. After that a worthier spirit must lead him, because Virgil is a rebel to the law of that city and cannot enter. Dante asks to be shown Saint Peter's gate and those in dismal plight. Virgil moves on. Dante follows close behind.