Then when those shades were so far parted from us that they could
no more be seen, a new thought set itself within me, from which
many others and diverse were born; and I so strayed from one unto
another that, thus wandering, I closed my eyes, and transmuted my
meditation into dream.



CANTO XIX. Fourth Ledge: the Slothful--Dante dreams of the
Siren.--The Angel of the Pass.--Ascent to the Fifth Ledge.--Pope
Adrian V.


At the hour when the diurnal heat, vanquished by the Earth or
sometimes by Saturn,[1] can warm no more the coldness of the
moon,--when the geomancers see their Greater Fortune[2] in the
east, rising before the dawn along a path which short while stays
dark for it,--there came to me in dream[3] a woman stammering,
with eyes asquint, and crooked on her feet, with hands lopped
off, and pallid in her color. I gazed at her; and as the sun
comforts the cold limbs which the night bennmbs, so my look made
her tongue nimble, and then set her wholly straight in little
while, and so colored her wan face as love requires. Then, when
she had her speech thus unloosed, she began to sing, so that with
difficulty should I have turned my attention from her. "I am,"
she sang, "I am the sweet Siren, and the mariners in mid sea
I bewitch, so full am I of pleasantness to hear. I turned Ulysses
from his wandering way by my song; and whoso abides with me
seldom departs, so wholly I content him."

[1] Toward dawn, when the warmth of the preceding day is
exhausted, Saturn was supposed to exert a frigid influence.

[2] "Geomancy is divination by points in the ground, or pebbles
arranged in certain figures, which have peculiar names. Among
these is the figure called the Fortuna Major, which by an effort
of imagination can also be formed out of some of the last stars
of Aquarius and some of the first of Pisces." These are the signs
that immediately precede Aries, in which the Sun now was, and
the stars forming the figure of the Greater Fortune would be in
the east about two hours before sunrise.

[3] The hour when this dream comes to Dante is "post mediam
noctem ... cum somnia vera,"--the hour in which it was
commonly believed that dreams have a true meaning. The woman seen
by Dante is the deceitful Siren, who symbolizes the temptation to
those sins of sense from which the spirits are purified in the
three upper rounds of Purgatory.


Not yet was her mouth closed when at my side a Lady[1] appeared,
holy, and ready to make her confused. "O Virgil, Virgil, who is
this?" she sternly said; and he came with his eyes fixed only on
that modest one. She took hold of the other, and in front she
opened her, rending her garments, and showed me her belly; this
waked me with the stench that issued from it. I turned my eyes,
and the good Virgil said, "At least three calls have I given
thee; arise and come; let us find the opening through which thou
mayst enter."

[1] This lady seems to be the type of the conscience, virtus
intellectualis, that calls reason to rescue the tempted soul.


Up I rose, and now were all the circles of the sacred mountain
full of the high day, and we went on with the new sun at our
backs. Following him, I bore my forehead like one who has it
laden with thought, and makes of himself the half arch of a
bridge, when I heard, "Come ye! here is the passage," spoken in a
mode soft and benign, such as is not heard in this mortal region.
With open wings, which seemed of a swan, he who thus had spoken
to us turned us upward between the two walls of the hard rock. He
moved his feathers then, and fanned us, affirming qui lugent[1]
to be blessed, for they shall have their souls mistresses of
consolation.[2] "What ails thee that ever on the ground thou
lookest?" my Guide began to say to me, both of us having mounted
up a little from the Angel. "With such apprehension a recent
vision makes me go, which bends me to itself so that I cannot
from the thought withdraw me." "Hast thou seen," said he, "that
ancient sorceress who above us henceforth is alone lamented? Hast
thou seen how from her man is unbound? Let it suffice thee, and
strike thy heels on the ground;[3] turn thine eyes to the lure
that the eternal King whirls with the great circles."

[1] "They that mourn."

[2] The meaning seems to be, "they shall be possessed of
comfort." Donne (i.e."mistresses ) is a rhyme-word, and affords
an instance of a straining of the meaning compelled by the rhyme.

[3] Hasten thy steps.


Like the falcon that first looks down, then turns at the cry, and
stretches forward, through desire of the food that draws him
thither; such I became, and such, so far as the rock is cleft to
afford a way to him who goeth up, did I go on as far as where the
circling[1] is begun. When I was come forth on the fifth round, I
saw people upon it who were weeping, lying upon the earth all
turned downward. "Adhoesit pavimento anima mea,"[2] I heard them


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