Project Dante

Canto XI

We came along a rim like shoulder 1
All ringed around by massive boulders
We found a crowd most cruelly pent
As air was fouled by dreadful stench 4
So down we go and pray to heaven
Before we enter circle seven
In the meantime troubled breathing
Lay against a headstone heaving 8
Names inscribed upon the stone
List the popes from number one
So sat we down to clear the air
As Virgil then some wisdom shared 12
'Beyond this broken ring of stones
Three rings descend to Satan's bones
The six behind were of their sort
But those below this circle fort 16
Reflect the worst that man can be
All locked in pain eternally
The way that hell is crafted here
From top to bottom make it clear 20
Those cowards who from hell without
Then Limbo ring in thickest cloud
Then the lustful in the second
Sex the sin, just for the record 24
Third ring holds those gluttons most
Who sit in stinking rain as ghosts
The fourth ring is the place to be
If you have been consumed by greed 28
The weight of wealth will drag them down
Upon their death to prison round
We then descend to circle five
Where wrathful and the sullen thrive 32
And then we enter circle six
The burning graves beyond the Styx
Now comes the time to draw a line
That separates these different crimes 36
As all below this bitter rim
Are all those damned by deeper sin
The seventh set in circles three
Divided by severity 40
The first reserved for those who kill
And those that rob and things worse still
The next is there for those that die
By their own hand, in hell they fry 44
The last for those who dare blaspheme
In circle third their ass is reamed
And so we come to circle eight
A place arranged for those too late 48
The lawyers and the liars crash
With flatterers and like same trash
The final ring is number nine
The deepest place for deepest crime 52
Those foulest who betrayed their lords
In lake of ice impaled on swords
And so the souls of traitors born
In hells ninth ring by heaven scorned 56
So there it is boy, top to pit
The lay of layered prison split
The sings arranged from least to worst
A place in death for all those cursed 60
Where every sin is marked in line
How foul it was, how base the crime.'
Though glad I was to know the way
That God did punish sin today 64
Then Virgil stands and looks to sky
To see which stars above fly by
And so we leave for lowest levels
Path that leads us to the devil 68
The rings that hold those left behind
We'd set ourselves to it, we'd bind
Our fate to travel down this trail
From now until the end of tail. 72