My song, the tuneful maidens, by whose aid
Amphion wall’d in Thebes, so with the truth
My speech shall best accord.  Oh ill-starr’d folk,
Beyond all others wretched! who abide
In such a mansion, as scarce thought finds words
To speak of, better had ye here on earth
Been flocks or mountain goats.  As down we stood
In the dark pit beneath the giants’ feet,
But lower far than they, and I did gaze
Still on the lofty battlement, a voice
Bespoke me thus:  “Look how thou walkest.  Take
Good heed, thy soles do tread not on the heads
Of thy poor brethren.”  Thereupon I turn’d,
And saw before and underneath my feet
A lake, whose frozen surface liker seem’d
To glass than water.  Not so thick a veil
In winter e’er hath Austrian Danube spread
O’er his still course, nor Tanais far remote
Under the chilling sky.  Roll’d o’er that mass
Had Tabernich or Pietrapana fall’n,

Not e’en its rim had creak’d.  As peeps the frog
Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams
The village gleaner oft pursues her toil,
So, to where modest shame appears, thus low
Blue pinch’d and shrin’d in ice the spirits stood,
Moving their teeth in shrill note like the stork. 
His face each downward held; their mouth the cold,
Their eyes express’d the dolour of their heart.

A space I look’d around, then at my feet
Saw two so strictly join’d, that of their head
The very hairs were mingled.  “Tell me ye,
Whose bosoms thus together press,” said I,
“Who are ye?” At that sound their necks they bent,
And when their looks were lifted up to me,
Straightway their eyes, before all moist within,
Distill’d upon their lips, and the frost bound
The tears betwixt those orbs and held them there. 
Plank unto plank hath never cramp clos’d up
So stoutly.  Whence like two enraged goats
They clash’d together; them such fury seiz’d.

And one, from whom the cold both ears had reft,
Exclaim’d, still looking downward:  “Why on us
Dost speculate so long?  If thou wouldst know
Who are these two, the valley, whence his wave
Bisenzio slopes, did for its master own
Their sire Alberto, and next him themselves. 
They from one body issued; and throughout
Caina thou mayst search, nor find a shade
More worthy in congealment to be fix’d,
Not him, whose breast and shadow Arthur’s land
At that one blow dissever’d, not Focaccia,
No not this spirit, whose o’erjutting head
Obstructs my onward view:  he bore the name
Of Mascheroni:  Tuscan if thou be,
Well knowest who he was:  and to cut short
All further question, in my form behold
What once was Camiccione.  I await
Carlino here my kinsman, whose deep guilt
Shall wash out mine.”  A thousand visages
Then mark’d I, which the keen and eager cold
Had shap’d into a doggish grin; whence creeps
A shiv’ring horror o’er me, at the thought
Of those frore shallows.  While we journey’d on
Toward the middle, at whose point unites
All heavy substance, and I trembling went
Through that eternal chillness, I know not
If will it were or destiny, or chance,
But, passing ’midst the heads, my foot did strike
With violent blow against the face of one.