Thousands and thousands go about the moat
  Shooting with shafts whatever soul emerges
  Out of the blood, more than his crime allots."

Near we approached unto those monsters fleet;
  Chiron an arrow took, and with the notch
  Backward upon his jaws he put his beard.

After he had uncovered his great mouth,
  He said to his companions: "Are you ware
  That he behind moveth whate'er he touches?

Thus are not wont to do the feet of dead men."
  And my good Guide, who now was at his breast,
  Where the two natures are together joined,

Replied: "Indeed he lives, and thus alone
  Me it behoves to show him the dark valley;
  Necessity, and not delight, impels us.

Some one withdrew from singing Halleluja,
  Who unto me committed this new office;
  No thief is he, nor I a thievish spirit.

But by that virtue through which I am moving
  My steps along this savage thoroughfare,
  Give us some one of thine, to be with us,

And who may show us where to pass the ford,
  And who may carry this one on his back;
  For 'tis no spirit that can walk the air."

Upon his right breast Chiron wheeled about,
  And said to Nessus: "Turn and do thou guide them,
  And warn aside, if other band may meet you."

We with our faithful escort onward moved
  Along the brink of the vermilion boiling,
  Wherein the boiled were uttering loud laments.

People I saw within up to the eyebrows,
  And the great Centaur said: "Tyrants are these,
  Who dealt in bloodshed and in pillaging.

Here they lament their pitiless mischiefs; here
  Is Alexander, and fierce Dionysius
  Who upon Sicily brought dolorous years.

That forehead there which has the hair so black
  Is Azzolin; and the other who is blond,
  Obizzo is of Esti, who, in truth,

Up in the world was by his stepson slain."
  Then turned I to the Poet; and he said,
  "Now he be first to thee, and second I."

A little farther on the Centaur stopped
  Above a folk, who far down as the throat
  Seemed from that boiling stream to issue forth.

A shade he showed us on one side alone,
  Saying: "He cleft asunder in God's bosom
  The heart that still upon the Thames is honoured."

Then people saw I, who from out the river
  Lifted their heads and also all the chest;
  And many among these I recognised.

Thus ever more and more grew shallower
  That blood, so that the feet alone it covered;
  And there across the moat our passage was.

"Even as thou here upon this side beholdest
  The boiling stream, that aye diminishes,"
  The Centaur said, "I wish thee to believe

That on this other more and more declines
  Its bed, until it reunites itself
  Where it behoveth tyranny to groan.

Justice divine, upon this side, is goading
  That Attila, who was a scourge on earth,
  And Pyrrhus, and Sextus; and for ever milks

The tears which with the boiling it unseals
  In Rinier da Corneto and Rinier Pazzo,
  Who made upon the highways so much war."

Then back he turned, and passed again the ford.