Its state, and who in it were highest seated?”
     As embers, at the breathing of the wind,
Their flame enliven, so that light I saw
Shine at my blandishments; and, as it grew
More fair to look on, so with voice more sweet,
Yet not in this our modern phrase, forthwith
It answer’d:  “From the day, when it was said
’ Hail Virgin!’ to the throes, by which my mother,
Who now is sainted, lighten’d her of me
Whom she was heavy with, this fire had come,
Five hundred fifty times and thrice, its beams
To reilumine underneath the foot
Of its own lion.  They, of whom I sprang,
And I, had there our birth-place, where the last
Partition of our city first is reach’d
By him, that runs her annual game.  Thus much
Suffice of my forefathers:  who they were,
And whence they hither came, more honourable
It is to pass in silence than to tell. 
All those, who in that time were there from Mars
Until the Baptist, fit to carry arms,
Were but the fifth of them this day alive. 
But then the citizen’s blood, that now is mix’d
From Campi and Certaldo and Fighine,
Ran purely through the last mechanic’s veins. 
O how much better were it, that these people
Were neighbours to you, and that at Galluzzo
And at Trespiano, ye should have your bound’ry,
Than to have them within, and bear the stench
Of Aguglione’s hind, and Signa’s, him,
That hath his eye already keen for bart’ring! 
Had not the people, which of all the world
Degenerates most, been stepdame unto Caesar,
But, as a mother, gracious to her son;
Such one, as hath become a Florentine,
And trades and traffics, had been turn’d adrift
To Simifonte, where his grandsire ply’d
The beggar’s craft.  The Conti were possess’d
Of Montemurlo still:  the Cerchi still
Were in Acone’s parish; nor had haply
From Valdigrieve past the Buondelmonte. 
The city’s malady hath ever source
In the confusion of its persons, as
The body’s, in variety of food: 
And the blind bull falls with a steeper plunge,
Than the blind lamb; and oftentimes one sword
Doth more and better execution,
Than five.  Mark Luni, Urbisaglia mark,
How they are gone, and after them how go
Chiusi and Sinigaglia; and ’t will seem
No longer new or strange to thee to hear,
That families fail, when cities have their end. 
All things, that appertain t’ ye, like yourselves,
Are mortal:  but mortality in some
Ye mark not, they endure so long, and you
Pass by so suddenly.  And as the moon
Doth, by the rolling of her heav’nly sphere,
Hide and reveal the strand unceasingly;
So fortune deals with Florence.  Hence admire not
At what of them I tell thee, whose renown
Time covers, the first Florentines.  I saw
The Ughi, Catilini and Filippi,
The Alberichi, Greci and Ormanni,
Now in their wane, illustrious citizens: 
And great as ancient, of Sannella him,