Mano a poetical history of the time of the close of the tenth century concerning the adventures of a Norman knight which fell part in Normandy part in Italy. In four books. By Richard Watson Dixon |
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| XII. | XII.— OF A VISION OF HELL, WHICH A MONK HAD. |
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XII.— OF A VISION OF HELL, WHICH A MONK HAD.
Out of this town there riseth a high hill,About whose sides live many anchorites
In cells cut in the rock with curious skill,
And laid in terraces along the heights;
This holy hill with that where stands the town
The ancient Roman aqueduct unites;
And passing o'er the vale her chain of stone,
Cuts it in two with line indelible;
A work right marvellous to gaze upon.
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A curious thing, whereof the fame was new
In our sojourn; the which I here will tell.
He found himself, when night had shed her dew,
In a long valley, narrow, deep, and straight,
Like that which lay all day beneath his view.
On each hand mountains rose precipitate,
Whose tops for darkness he could nowise see,
Though wistful that high gloom to penetrate;
And through this hollow, one, who seemed to be
Of calm and quiet mien, was leading him
In friendly converse and society:
But whom he wist not: neither could he trim
Memory's spent torch to know what things were said,
Nor about what, in that long way and dim.
But as the valley still before him spread,
He saw a line, that did the same divide
Across in halves: which made him feel great dread.
For he beheld fire burning on one side
Unto the mountains from the midmost vale;
On the other, ice the empire did discide,
Fed from the opposing hill with snow and hail.
So dreary was that haunt of fire and cold,
That nought on earth to equal might avail.
Fire ended where began the frozen mould,
Both in extreme at their conjunction:
So close were they, no severance might be told:
No thinnest line of separation,
Like that which is by painter drawn to part
One colour in his piece from other one,
So fine as that which held these realms apart.
And through the vale the souls of men in pain
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From heat to cold, from cold to heat again:
And not an instant through their anguish great
In either element might they remain.
So great the multitude thus tossed by fate,
That as a mist they seemed in the dark air.
No shrimper, who at half-tide takes his freight,
When high his pole-net seaward he doth bear,
Ever beheld so thick a swarm to leap
Out of the brine on evening still and fair,
Waking a mist mile-long 'twixt shore and deep.
Now while his mind was filled with ruth and fear,
And with great horror stood his eyeballs steep,
Deeming that hell before him did appear,
And souls in torment tossed from brink to brink:
Upon him looked the one who set him there,
And said: “This is not hell, as thou dost think,
Neither those torments of the cold and heat
Are those wherewith the damned wail and shrink.”
And therewith from that place he turned his feet;
And sometime on they walked, the while this man
In aguish shuddering did the effect repeat:
Such spasms of horror through his body ran,
Walking with stumbling, and with glazed eyes
Whither he knew not led, ghastly and wan.
Then said the other: “In those agonies
No more than hell's beginning know: behold,
The doom of hell itself is otherwise.”
Therewith he drew aside his vesture's fold,
And showed his heart: than fire more hot it burned
One half: the rest was ice than ice more cold.
A moment showed he this: and then he turned,
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And he, who in his mind these things discerned,
Came to himself with long astonishment.
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