Chapter 19 Dante's Dream of the Siren. The Fifth Circle: The Avaricious and Prodigal. Pope Adrian V.
It was the hour when the diurnal heat
No more can warm the coldness of the moon,
Vanquished by earth, or peradventure Saturn,
When geomancers their Fortuna Major
See in the orient before the dawn
Rise by a path that long remains not dim,
There came to me in dreams a stammering woman,
Squint in her eyes, and in her feet distorted,
With hands dissevered and of sallow hue.
I looked at her; and as the sun restores
The frigid members which the night benumbs,
Even thus my gaze did render voluble
Her tongue, and made her all erect thereafter
In little while, and the lost countenance
As love desires it so in her did colour.
When in this wise she had her speech unloosed,
She 'ga
