The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

IN the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray

How first I enter'd it I scarce can say, Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh'd My senses down, when the true path I left, But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where clos'd The valley, that had pierc'd my heart with dread, I look'd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad Already vested with that planet's beam, Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.

"Thy soul is by vile fear assail'd, which oft So overcasts a man, that he recoils From noblest resolution, like a beast At some false semblance in the twilight gloom.

"All hope abandon ye who enter here."

"This miserable fate Suffer the wretched souls of those, who liv'd Without or praise or blame, with that ill band Of angels mix'd, who nor rebellious prov'd Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves Were only.

"No greater grief than to remember days Of joy, when mis'ry is at hand!