CANTO XXX. WHEN Juno, for the cause of Semelè, That toward him as he saw his wife to make, He cried, "Spread out the nets, that I may take And took one, who the name Learchus bare, 10 And whirled him round, and dashed him on a stone, Then drowned she with herself her other care, And when vicissitude had overthrown The all-presuming Trojans' high-proud state, And quelled the kingdom and the king in one; 15 5 Of reason reft, she barked out like a hound, But nor in Troy nor Thebes were ever found Or human members, or a beast's to wound, Like as I saw two naked spirits pale Run biting, in such fashion as displays The boar who breaks from his confining pale; Teeth on his neck, and hauling him, has made, Said, "Yonder goblin's Gianni Schicchi, who Goes raving, trimming thus each other shade." "O," said I, "may the other of the two Not set his fangs on thee, nor let it cost Thee pains to name him, ere he start from view." "That is," he answered me, "the old-world Abominable Myrrha, who became Her father's lover, with a love that crost The bounds of fitness. To his couch she cam In herself counterfeiting other's make, As he who quits us there, with equal blame, Endured Buoso Donâti's form to take, And willed, accrediting the will aright, For the first lady of the stud her sake." Now after those mad two were out of sight, On whom mine eyes had been so firmly ben I turned them on the misborn others quite, And saw one that a lute's shape would present If only he should have his groin cut straigh From off the side, on which a man is rent. The direful dropsy, which so disparate Makes every limb with humors indigest, That face to paunch is not commensurate, Made his two lips as far apart to rest As in the hectic patient, who from thirst Turns upward one, the other toward his chest. "O ye that walk within this world accurst, I had enough on earth of all my will, Doth much more parch me than the maladies, That so impoverish my face in flesh. 60 65 The rigid justice, which my frame so dries, 70 Takes order from the place where I committed My crime, to crowd the issues of my sighs. The metal that the Baptist's mark should owe, 75 And one's already come, if we no other Than true accounts from those mad runners get; What helps it me, that have my limbs in tether? That but an inch an age I could have stirred, And sought him out amongst this nation blurred, They did to beat those florins make me fain, I asked him, "Who are those downstricken twain, To smoke, who close to thy right flank remain?" 66 "I found them so, nor have they given one turn,” He answered, "since I rained among this clique, And shall not haply for an hour eterne: 81 85 90 96 Sinon is one, from Troy a perjured Greek; The other that false wife, who Joseph blamed; The broiling fever makes them so to reek." |