Divine Comedy

WHO, e'en in words unfetter'd, might at full Tell of the wounds and blood that now I saw, Though he repeated oft the tale? No tongue So vast a theme could equal, speech and thought Both impotent alike. If in one band Collected, stood the people all, who e'er Pour'd on Apulia's happy soil their blood, Slain by the Trojans, and in that long war When of the rings the measur'd booty made A pile so high, as Rome's historian writes Who errs not, with the multitude, that felt The grinding force of Guiscard's Norman steel, And those the rest, whose bones are gather'd yet At Ceperano, there where treachery Branded th' Apulian name, or where beyond Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms The old Alardo conquer'd; and his limbs One were to show transpierc'd, another his Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this Were but a thing of nought, to the' hideous sight Of the ninth chasm. A rundlet, that hath lost Its middle or side stave, gapes not so wide, As one I mark'd, torn from the chin throughout Down to the hinder passage: 'twixt the legs Dangling his entrails hung, the midriff lay Open to view, and wretched ventricle, That turns th' englutted aliment to dross.

Whilst eagerly I fix on him my gaze, He ey'd me, with his hands laid his breast bare, And cried; "Now mark how I do rip me! lo!