CANTO IX.
THAT hue which cowardice brought out on me,
Beholding my Conductor backward turn,
Sooner repressed within him his new color.
He stopped attentive, like a man who listens,
Because the eye could not conduct him far 5
Through the black air, and through the heavy fog.
"Still it behoveth us to win the fight,"
Began he; "Else . . . Such offered us herself . . .
O how I long that some one here arrive!"
Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning 10
He covered up with what came afterward,
That they were words quite different from the first;
But none the less his saying gave me fear,
Because I carried out the broken phrase,
Perhaps to a worse meaning than he had. 15
"Into this bottom of the doleful conch
Doth any e'er descend from the first grade,
Which for its pain has only hope cut off?"
