When through the dolorous city of damned souls
The Florentine with Vergil took his way,
A dismal marsh they passed, whose fetid shoals
Held sinners by the myriad. Swollen and grey,
Like worms that fester in the foul decay
Of sweltering carrion, these bad spirits sank
Chin-deep in stagnant slime and ooze that stank.
Year after year forever--year by year,
Through billions of the centuries that lie
Like specks of dust upon the dateless sphere
Of heaven's eternity, they cankering sigh
Between the black waves and the starless sky;
And daily dying have no hope to gain
By death or change or respite of their pain.
What was their crime, you ask? Nay, listen: "We
Were sullen--sad what time we drank the light,
And delicate air, that all day daintily
Is cheered by sunshine; for we bore black night
And murky smoke of sloth, in God's despite,
Within our barren souls, by discontent
From joy of all fair things and wholesome pent:
Therefore in this low Hell from jocund sight
And sound He bans us; and as there we grew
Pallid with idleness, so here a blight
Perpetual rots with slow-corroding dew
Our poisonous carcase, and a livid hue
Corpse-like o'erspreads these sodden limbs that take
And yield corruption to the loathly lake."
--John Addington Symonds