orn
Gaddo, before my face, from life was torn!
'Can you not help me, father?' first he cried,
And perished; then, I saw the younger born,
Three, one by one, fall ere the sixth day sped--
Plainly as you see me, and this accursed head.

'Already blind, I fondly grope my way
To them, and for three days their names I call
After their death; then famine found its prey
And did what sorrow could not.' This was all
He said."
(XXXIII, 35.)

And now we come with the poets to the lowest depths of Hell, where we
see imprisoned in ice Lucifer, huge and hideous. As we gaze on mankind's
enemy, an archangel fallen and punished for sin, the words of Isaias
come to mind: "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, who did'st
rise in the morning! How art thou fallen to the earth, that did'st wound
the nations. And thou saidst within thy heart, 'I will ascend into
Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God--I will be like
the most High. But yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, into the very
depth of the pit." (Is., XIV, 12.)

Let us see how Dante puts Lucifer "into the very depth of the pit."

"The lamentable kingdom's emperor
Issued from out the ice with half his breast;
And with a giant more do I compare
Than with his arms do giants; therefore see
How great must be that whole which corresponds
Unto a part so fashioned. If he was
As beautiful as he is ugly now,
And raised his brows against his Maker, sure
All sorrowfulness must proceed from him.
Ah! how great marvel unto me it seemed
When I beheld three faces to his head!
The one before, and that was vermeil-hue;
Two were the others which adjoined to this,
Over the midst of either shoulder, and
They made the joining where the crown is placed.
And between white and yellow seemed the right;
The left was such an one to be beheld
As come from there wherein the Nile is sunk.
There issued under each two mighty wings,
Such as 'twas fitting for so great a bird:
I never saw the sails of shipping such.
They had not feathers, but the mode thereof
Was like a bat's; and these he fluttered so
That from him there was moved a threefold wind:
Cocytus all was frozen over hence.
With six eyes wept he, and three chins along
The weeping trickled, and a bloody foam.
At every mouth he shattered with his teeth
A sinner, in the manner of a brake,
So that he thus made woful three of them.
T