First somewhat pausing, till the mournful words
Were ended, then to me the bard began: 
“Lose not the time; but speak and of him ask,
If more thou wish to learn.”  Whence I replied: 
“Question thou him again of whatsoe’er
Will, as thou think’st, content me; for no power
Have I to ask, such pity’ is at my heart.”

He thus resum’d; “So may he do for thee
Freely what thou entreatest, as thou yet
Be pleas’d, imprison’d Spirit! to declare,
How in these gnarled joints the soul is tied;
And whether any ever from such frame
Be loosen’d, if thou canst, that also tell.”

Thereat the trunk breath’d hard, and the wind soon
Chang’d into sounds articulate like these;

“Briefly ye shall be answer’d.  When departs
The fierce soul from the body, by itself
Thence torn asunder, to the seventh gulf
By Minos doom’d, into the wood it falls,
No place assign’d, but wheresoever chance
Hurls it, there sprouting, as a grain of spelt,
It rises to a sapling, growing thence
A savage plant.  The Harpies, on its leaves
Then feeding, cause both pain and for the pain
A vent to grief.  We, as the rest, shall come
For our own spoils, yet not so that with them
We may again be clad; for what a man
Takes from himself it is not just he have. 
Here we perforce shall drag them; and throughout
The dismal glade our bodies shall be hung,
Each on the wild thorn of his wretched shade.”

Attentive yet to listen to the trunk
We stood, expecting farther speech, when us
A noise surpris’d, as when a man perceives
The wild boar and the hunt approach his place
Of station’d watch, who of the beasts and boughs
Loud rustling round him hears.  And lo! there came
Two naked, torn with briers, in headlong flight,
That they before them broke each fan o’ th’ wood. 
“Haste now,” the foremost cried, “now haste thee death!”

The’ other, as seem’d, impatient of delay
Exclaiming, “Lano! not so bent for speed
Thy sinews, in the lists of Toppo’s field.” 
And then, for that perchance no longer breath
Suffic’d him, of himself and of a bush
One group he made.  Behind them was the wood
Full of black female mastiffs, gaunt and fleet,
As greyhounds that have newly slipp’d the leash. 
On him, who squatted down, they stuck their fangs,
And having rent him piecemeal bore away
The tortur’d limbs.  My guide then seiz’d my hand,
And led me to the thicket, which in vain
Mourn’d through its bleeding wounds:  “O Giacomo
Of Sant’ Andrea! what avails it thee,”
It cried, “that of me thou hast made thy screen? 
For thy ill life what blame on me recoils?”

When o’er it he had paus’d, my master spake: 
“Say who wast thou, that at so many points
Breath’st out with blood thy lamentable speech?”