The soul, transform’d into the brute, glides off,
Hissing along the vale, and after him
The other talking sputters; but soon turn’d
His new-grown shoulders on him, and in few
Thus to another spake:  “Along this path
Crawling, as I have done, speed Buoso now!”
     So saw I fluctuate in successive change
Th’ unsteady ballast of the seventh hold: 
And here if aught my tongue have swerv’d, events
So strange may be its warrant.  O’er mine eyes
Confusion hung, and on my thoughts amaze. 
     Yet ’scap’d they not so covertly, but well
I mark’d Sciancato:  he alone it was
Of the three first that came, who chang’d not:  thou,
The other’s fate, Gaville, still dost rue.

CANTO XXVI

Florence exult! for thou so mightily
Hast thriven, that o’er land and sea thy wings
Thou beatest, and thy name spreads over hell! 
Among the plund’rers such the three I found
Thy citizens, whence shame to me thy son,
And no proud honour to thyself redounds. 
     But if our minds, when dreaming near the dawn,
Are of the truth presageful, thou ere long
Shalt feel what Prato, (not to say the rest)
Would fain might come upon thee; and that chance
Were in good time, if it befell thee now. 
Would so it were, since it must needs befall! 
For as time wears me, I shall grieve the more. 
     We from the depth departed; and my guide
Remounting scal’d the flinty steps, which late
We downward trac’d, and drew me up the steep. 
Pursuing thus our solitary way
Among the crags and splinters of the rock,
Sped not our feet without the help of hands. 
     Then sorrow seiz’d me, which e’en now revives,
As my thought turns again to what I saw,
And, more than I am wont, I rein and curb
The powers of nature in me, lest they run
Where Virtue guides not; that if aught of good
My gentle star, or something better gave me,
I envy not myself the precious boon. 
     As in that season, when the sun least veils
His face that lightens all, what time the fly
Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then
Upon some cliff reclin’d, beneath him sees
Fire-flies innumerous spangling o’er the vale,
Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies: 
With flames so numberless throughout its space
Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth
Was to my view expos’d.  As he, whose wrongs
The bears aveng’d, at its departure saw
Elijah’s chariot, when the steeds erect
Rais’d their steep flight for heav’n; his eyes meanwhile,
Straining pursu’d them, till the flame alone
Upsoaring like a misty speck he kenn’d;
E’en thus along the gulf moves every flame,
A sinner so enfolded close in each,
That none exhibits token of the theft. 
     Upon the bridge I forward bent to look,
And grasp’d a flinty mass, or else had fall’n,