The Siren's False Promise — Divine Comedy

Desire can dress ruin as beauty before you are awake enough to resist. At the hour when dawn checks the shadowy cone, Dante dreams of a stammering, maimed woman whose form his look alone raises erect and paints with love's hue. She sings as the Siren who enchanted Ulysses and fills whoever hears her so fully they seldom leave. Before her mouth closes, a holy woman demands of Virgil who this is; she tears the Siren's robes and shows the rotting belly beneath, and the stench wakes him. Virgil has called three times: rise, begone, find the opening. Day floods the sacred mount. An angel with swan-like wings fans them onward and blesses those who mourn. Dante still broods on the dream until Virgil names the old enchantress and bids him lift his gaze like a falcon leaving earth for the lure above. On the fifth terrace souls lie prone, bound hand and foot, faces in dust, sighing that their souls have cleaved to it. They warn the pilgrims to keep the rightward brink. Dante speaks with Pope Adrian V, successor of Peter, who learned in a month how heavy the robe of sovereignty feels on the shoulder that would guard it from the mire. Late in life he saw life's cozenage and turned from earthly love to purer being; avarice quenched the good without which there is no working, so justice holds them downward here. When Dante kneels in compunction, Adrian refuses worship: they are fellow servants of one Sovran Power. He asks only that his kinswoman Alagia not be corrupted by the house's ill example.