Your reputation is the color of grass

Which comes and goes, and that discolors it

By which it issues green from out the earth."
And I: “Thy true speech fills my heart with good

Humility, and great tumor thou assuagest;
But who is he, of whom just now thou spakest?"

"That," he replied, "is Provenzan Salvani,

And he is here because he had presumed

To bring Siena all into his hands.

He has gone thus, and goeth without rest

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E'er since he died; such money renders back

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In payment he who is on earth too daring."

And I: "If every spirit who awaits

The verge of life before that he repent,

Remains below there and ascends not hither,

(Unless good orison shall him bestead,)

Until as much time as he lived be passed,

How was the coming granted him in largess?" "When he in greatest splendor lived,” said he,

"Freely upon the Campo of Siena,

All shame being laid aside, he placed himself;

And there to draw his friend from the duress

Which in the prison-house of Charles he suffered,
He brought himself to tremble in each vein.

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I say no more, and know that I speak darkly;

Yet little time shall pass before thy neighbors

Will so demean themselves that thou canst gloss it. This action has released him from those confines."

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CANTO XII.

ABREAST, like oxen going in a yoke,

I with that heavy-laden soul went on,

As long as the sweet pedagogue permitted; But when he said, "Leave him, and onward pass,

For here 't is good that with the sail and oars,
As much as may be, each push on his barque";
Upright, as walking wills it, I redressed

My person, notwithstanding that my thoughts
Remained within me downcast and abated.

I had moved on, and followed willingly

The footsteps of my Master, and we both Already showed how light of foot we were, When unto me he said: "Cast down thine

eyes;

way,

'T were well for thee, to alleviate the
To look upon the bed beneath thy feet."

As, that some memory there may be of them,

Above the buried dead their tombs in earth
Bear sculptured on them what they were before;

Whence often there we weep for them afresh,

From pricking of remembrance, which alone
To the compassionate doth set its spur;
So saw I there, but of a better semblance

In point of artifice, with figures covered
Whate'er as pathway from the mount projects.

I saw that one who was created noble

More than all other creatures, down from heaven
Fall like a thunder-bolt upon one side.

I saw Briareus smitten by the dart

Celestial, lying on the other side,

Heavy upon the earth by mortal frost.

I saw Thymbræus, Pallas saw, and Mars,

Still clad in armor round about their father,
Gaze at the scattered members of the giants.

I saw, at foot of his great labor, Nimrod,

As if bewildered, looking at the people
Who had been proud with him in Sennaar.

O Niobe! with what afflicted eyes

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Thee I beheld upon the pathway traced,
Between thy seven and seven children slain!

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O Saul! how fallen upon thy proper sword
Didst thou appear there lifeless in Gilboa,
That felt thereafter neither rain nor dew!

O mad Arachne! so I thee beheld

E'en then half spider, sad upon the shreds Of fabric wrought in evil hour for thee! O Rehoboam! no more seems to threaten

Thine image there; but full of consternation
A chariot bears it off, when none pursues!
Displayed moreo'er the adamantine pavement

How unto his own mother made Alcmæon
Costly appear the luckless ornament;

Displayed how his own sons did throw themselves

Upon Sennacherib within the temple,

And how, he being dead, they left him there; Displayed the ruin and the cruel carnage

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That Tomyris wrought, when she to Cyrus said,
"Blood didst thou thirst for, and with blood I glut

Displayed how routed fled the Assyrians

After that Holofernes had been slain,

And likewise the remainder of that slaughter.

I saw there Troy in ashes and in caverns;

O Ilion! thee, how abject and debased,
Displayed the image that is there discerned !

Who e'er of pencil master was or stile,

[thee!

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That could portray the shades and traits which there
Would cause each subtile genius to admire?

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