The Divine Comedy

by Dante Alighieri

In middle1 of the journey of our days I found that I was in a darksome wood2— The right road lost and vanished in the maze. Ah me! how hard to make it understood How rough that wood was, wild, and terrible:

I was created by the Power Divine,1 The Highest Wisdom, and the Primal Love.

“Here it behoves to leave all fears behind; All cowardice behoveth here to die. For now the place I told thee of we find, Where thou the miserable folk shouldst see Who the true good4 of reason have resigned.”

“The bitterest of woes Is to remember in the midst of pain A happy past;