To eat, arose before me with the prayer: 60 "O father, 'twere for us an easier pain If thou wouldst eat us. Thou didst us array In this poor flesh: unclothe us now again." I calmed me, not to swell their woe. That day And the next day no single word we said. Ah! pitiless earth, that didst unyawning stay! When we had reached the fourth day, Gaddo, spread Out at my feet, fell prone; and made demand: "Why, O my father, offering us no aid?" There died he. Plain as I before thee stand 70 I saw the three as one by one they failed, The fifth day and the sixth; then with my hand, Blind now, I groped for each of them, and wailed On them for two days after they were gone. Famine[842] at last, more strong than grief, prevailed,' When he had uttered this, his eyes all thrown Awry, upon the hapless skull he fell With teeth that, dog-like, rasped upon the bone. Ah, Pisa! byword of the folk that dwell In the sweet country where the Si[843] doth sound, 80 Since slow thy neighbours to reward thee well Let now Gorgona and Capraia[844] mound Themselves where Arno with the sea is blent, Till every one within thy walls be drowned. For though report of Ugolino went That he betrayed[845] thy castles, thou didst wrong Thus cruelly his children to torment. These were not guilty, for they were but young, Thou modern Thebes![846] Brigata and young Hugh, And the other twain of whom above 'tis sung. 90 We onward passed to where another crew[847] Of shades the thick-ribbed ice doth fettered keep; Their heads not downward these, but backward threw. Their very weeping will not let them weep, And grief, encountering barriers at their eyes, Swells, flowing inward, their affliction deep; For the first tears that issue crystallise, And fill, like vizor fashioned out of glass, The hollow cup o'er which the eyebrows rise. And though, as 'twere a callus, now my face 100 By reason of the frost was wholly grown Benumbed and dead to feeling, I could trace (So it appeared), a breeze against it blown, And asked: 'O Master, whence comes this? So low As where we are is any vapour[848] known?' And he replied: 'Thou ere long while shalt go Where touching this thine eye shall answer true, Discovering that which makes the wind to blow.' Then from the cold crust one of that sad crew Demanded loud: 'Spirits, for whom they hold 110 The inmost room, so truculent were you, Back from my face let these hard veils be rolled, That I may vent the woe which chokes my heart, Ere tears again solidify with cold.' And I to him: 'First tell me who thou art If thou'dst have help; then if I help not quick To the bottom[849] of the ice let me depart.' He answered: 'I am Friar Alberic[850]--