Florence exult: thou so mightily hast thriven that over land and sea thy wings thou beatest, and thy name spreads over hell. Among the plunderers just left, three were her citizens: shame to him her son, and no proud honour to herself. They depart the depth. Virgil remounts the flinty steps. Among crags their feet need the help of hands. Sorrow seizes Dante. He reins and curbs the powers of nature in him, lest they run where Virtue guides not.
As a peasant at the hour when the fly gives way to the gnat sees fire-flies spangling his vale, so numberless shone the eighth chasm. Each flame enfolds a sinner so close that none exhibits token of the theft. Dante bends on the bridge and grasps a flinty mass, or else had fallen. Yon fire, parted at the summit like the Theban brothers' pile, holds Ulysses and Diomede, together in vengeance as erewhile in wrath. They deplore the horse that opened Rome's seed, the guile that reft Achilles, the Palladium stolen from Troy. Dante's prayer is a thousandfold that they pause. See how toward it with desire I bend. Virgil accepts, but: thy tongue refrain; to question them be mine. They were Greeks, and might shun discourse with thee.
The greater horn rolls like a tongue in wind. When I escaped from Circe, nor fondness for my son, nor reverence of my old father, nor return of love that should have crowned Penelope, could overcome the zeal to explore the world, man's evil and his virtue. One bark, a small faithful band, tardy with age, they come to the strait where Hercules ordained the boundaries not to be overstepped by man. O brothers, to this short remaining watch refuse not proof of the unpeopled world. Ye were not formed to live the life of brutes, but virtue to pursue and knowledge high. Those few words sharpen them. For the witless flight they make their oars wings, still gaining on the left. The other pole rises. A mountain dim appears, loftiest he thought of all he ever beheld. Joy, then mourning. A whirlwind from the new land whirls her thrice; the fourth time lifts the poop and sinks the prow. And over us the booming billow closed.
Coming Up in Chapter 27
The next flame will roar like the Sicilian bull before it finds a tongue. A fox who once wore Francis' girdle will ask for news of Romagna, then tell how a pope's keys bought counsel that no absolution could undo.
