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e impenitent absolve; Nor to repent and will at once consist, By contradiction absolute forbid.'" Oh mis'ry! how I shook myself, when he Seiz'd me, and cried, "Thou haply thought'st me not A disputant in logic so exact." To Minos down he bore me, and the judge Twin'd eight times round his callous back the tail, Which biting with excess of rage, he spake: "This is a guilty soul, that in the fire Must vanish. Hence perdition-doom'd I rove A prey to rankling sorrow in this garb." When he had thus fulfill'd his words, the flame In dolour parted, beating to and fro, And writhing its sharp horn. We onward went, I and my leader, up along the rock, Far as another arch, that overhangs The foss, wherein the penalty is paid Of those, who load them with committed sin. CANTO XXVIII 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! "How is Mohammed mangled! before me Walks Ali weeping, from the chin his face Cleft to the forelock; and the others all Whom here thou seest, while they liv'd, did sow Scandal and schism, and therefore thus are rent. A fiend is here behind, who with his sword Hacks us thus cruelly, slivering again Each of this ream, when we have compast round The
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