“O Virgins, sacrosanct, if I have ever, for your sake, suffered vigils,cold,, and hunger, great need makes me entreat my recompense.”

“O you, who in some pretty boat,Eager to listen, have been followingBehind my ship, that singing sails alongTurn back to look again upon your own shores;Tempt not the deep, lest unawares,In losing me, you yourselves might be lost.The sea I sail has never yet been passed;Minerva breathes, and pilots me Apollo,And Muses nine point out to me the Bears.You other few who have neck upliftedBetimes to the bread of angels upon Which one lives and does not grow sated,Well may you launch your vesselUpon the deep sea.”

“Through me the way into the suffering city,Through me the way into eternal pain,Through me the way that runs among the lost.”

“those cries rose from among the twisted rootsthrough which the spirits of the damned were slinkingto hide from us. Therefore my Master said:'If you break off a twig, what you will learnwill drive what you are thinking from your head.'Puzzled, I raised my hand a bit and slowlybroke off a branchlet from an enormous thorn:and the great trunk of it cried: 'Why do you break me?'And after blood had darkened all the bowlof the wound, it cried again: 'Why do you tear me?Is there no pity left in any soul?Men we were, and now we are changed to sticks;well might your hand have been more mercifulwere we no more than souls of lice and ticks.'As a green branch with one end all aflamewill hiss and sputter sap out of the otheras the air escapes- so from that trunk there camewords and blood together, gout by gout.Startled, I dropped the branch that I was holdingand stood transfixed by fear,...”

“Hope not ever to see Heaven. I have come to lead you to theother shore; into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.”

“I, answering in the end, began: 'Alas,how many yearning thoughts, what great desire,have lead them through such sorrow to their fate?”

“Great fire can follow a small spark: there may be better voices after me to pray to Cyrrha's god for aid - that he may answer.”