Jerusalem Delivered: An English Prose Version

Canto Four

C A N T O F O U R i While these people are intent on their ingenious contrivances, that they might soon be put to use, the great enemyof the human race was turning his envious eyes on the Christians: and seeing them now happy and content , he bit both his lips for rage and like awounded bull poured out his grief, bellowing and snorting. 2 Then, having turned his everythought to bringing upon the Christians th utmost grief, he commands that his populace be assembled (horrible coun cil!) within the royal palace; as if (ah fool!) it should be but a trifling thing to take up arms against the divine will; fool, who holds himself equal to Heaven, and consigns to oblivion how the wrathful hand of Godlaunches thunder. 3 The piercing sound of the Tartarean trumpet calls up the inhabitants of th eternal shades. The black capacious cavernstremble and the blind airechoes to that reverberation; nor ever so strident plummets the lightning fron heaven's supernal regions nor ever so stricken trembles the earth when she locks up vapors in her pregnant womb. 4 Straightway the deities of the Abyss in various troops come running fror all sides to the lofty portals. Oh how strange, oh how horrible the shapes! how much of terror and death is in their eyes! Some print the earth with beastly tracks, and on a human head have twining snakes for hair; and behind them writhes an immense tail that like a whip coils and uncoils itself. yo JerusalemDelivered 5 Here might you see a thousand filthy Harpies and a thousand Centaurs and Sphinxes and pale Gorgons; amyriad ravenous Scyllas howling and Hydras hooting and Pythons hissing and Chimaeras belching forth black flames;and horrible Polyphemuses and Geryons; and in strange monstrosities , no elsewhere known or seen, diverse appearances confused and blended into one. 6 Some on the right and some on the left, they taketheir seats before the cruel king. Pluto sits in the middle, and with his right hand wieldsthe rude and massyscepter; and not so high does rockycliff by the seaor alpine bluff, nor yet does Calpe raise itself so high or mighty Adas, diat compared to him it would not seem a little hill: so he holds high his massivehead and massive horns. 7 A fearsome majesty in his fierce countenance increases die terror and makes him even more proud: his eyesburn red, and his gaze glowers, infected with poison like an ill-omened comet; his huge beard envelopshis chin and shaggy and thick comes down over his hairychest, and likea deep-yawning maelstrom his mouth stands open, filthy widi black blood. 8 Even asthe sulphurous and flaming smoke issuesfrom Mongibello, and the stench and the rumble; so are the black fumes from his savage mouth, such are the sparksand the fetid smell. While he was speakingCerberusrepressed his barking, and Hydra grew mute at the sound: Cocytus stopped and the abyssestrembled at it, and in these words his great voicemight be heard: 9 "Godheads of Tartarus, worthy rather of aseat up there beyond die sun whence isyour origin, yewho ere now along with me die greatmischance drove from the most blissful regions into this dreadful circle: too wellknown are the long-standing envyand savagewradi of that Odier, and om C A N T O F O U R 71 lofty enterprise. Now He rules the stars according to His will, and we are to be adjudged as rebel souls. 10 "And in the stead of Day serene and pure, of the golden Sun, of the starry quires, He has shut us here in this gloomy abyss;nor does He will that we should aspire again to our formerhonor. And later (ah how harsh it isto remember it; this isthat which most embitters my sufferings!) He hascalled Man to the blessed Sees of Heaven—Man, vileMan, and born on earth of vile mud. ii "Nor did that seem to Him enough, but (only to work usmore harm) He gave His son asprey to death. Who came and broke the gates of Hell and dared to set his foot in our principality, and to take from us the souls that were rightly ours by fate, and to bear backto Heaven so rich a booty, aVictor proceeding in triumph, and in our scorn to display there the ensigns of conquered Hell. 12 "But why do I renew my sorrows...