IN the midway of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray

Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell

It were no easy task, how savage wild

That forest, how robust and rough its growth,

Which to remember only, my dismay

Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

Yet to discourse of what there good befell,

All else will I relate discover'd there.

How first I enter'd it I scarce can say,

Such sleepy dullness in that instant weigh'd

My senses down, when the true path I left,

But when a mountain's foot I reach'd, where clos'd

The valley, that had pierc'd my heart with dread,

I look'd aloft, and saw his shoulders broad

Already vested with that planet's beam,

Who leads all wanderers safe through every way.

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(CANTO I)

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***The Divine Comedy***is divided into three canticles:Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each canticle consists of thirty-three cantos, except the first which has thirty-four, thus the entire poem is made up of one-hundred cantos.The kingdom of damnation is presented as an overturned cone, with its base lying underneath the hemisphere of the land surface and its tip reaching to the center of the earth. It is divided into ten zones: the Ante-Inferno and nine circles in which the souls are punished for their sins, moving from the least to the most grievous. After the first six circles, the seventh is divided into three sub-circles or rounds, the eighth into ten pits, and the ninth into four zones: Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca. museocasadidante . it