Some Similes from "Inferno" to Inspire You

Some Similes from "Inferno" to Inspire You
Canto I


As flowerlets drooped and puckered in the night/ turn up to the returning sun and spread/ their petals wide on his new warmth and light--/ just so my wilted spirits rose again/ and such a heat of zeal surged through my veins/ that I was born anew (124-129).


Canto II


Voices hoarse and shrill/ and sounds of blows, all intermingled, raised/ tumult and pandemonium that still/ whirls on the air forever dirty with it/ as if a whirlwind sucked at sand (25-30).


Weeping and cursing they come for evermore,/ and demon Charon with eyes like burning coals/ herds them in, and with a whistling oar/ flails on the stragglers to his wake of souls./ As leaves in autumn loosen and stream down/ until the branch stands bare above its tatters/ spread on the rustling ground, so one by one/ the evil seed of Adam in its Fall/ cast themselves, at his signal, from the shore/ and streamed away like birds who hear their call (105-114).


Canto V


Now a choir of anguish, like a wound,/ strikes through the tortured air (25-26).


I came to a place stripped bare of every light/ and roaring on the naked dark like seas/ wracked by a war of winds (28-30).


As cranes go over sounding their harsh cry,/ leaving the long streak of their flight in air,/ so came these spirits, wailing as they fly (46-48).




As mating doves that love calls to their nest/ glide through the air with motionless raised wings,/ borne by the sweet desire that fills each breast--/ Just so those spirits turned on the torn sky/ from the band where Dido whirls across the air;/ such was the power of pity in my cry (84-87).


Canto VI


As a hungry cur will set the echoes raving/ and then fall still when he is thrown a bone, / all of this clamor began in his craving,/ so the three ugly heads of Cerberus,/ whose yowling at those wretches deafened them,/ choked on their putrid sops and stopped their fuss (28-33).


Canto VII


As puffed out sails fall when the mast gives way/ and flutter to a self-convulsing heap--so collapsed Plutus into that dead clay (13-15).


Canto VIII


Phlegyas, the madman, blew his rage among/ those muddy marshes like a cheat deceived,/ or like a fool at some imagined wrong (22-24).


Canto IX


Belts of greenest hydras wound and wound/ about their waists, and snakes and horned serpents/ grew from their heads like matted hair and bound/ their horrid brows (37-40).


Suddenly there broke on the dirty swell/ of the dark marsh a squall of terrible sound/ that sent a tremor through both shores of Hell;/ a sound as if two continents of air,/ one frigid and one scorching, clashed head on/ in a war of winds that stripped the forests bare, ripped off whole boughs and blew them helter skelter/ among the range of dust it raised before it/ making the beasts and shepherds run for shelter (61-69).


Canto X


It had raised itself,/ I think, upon its knees, and it looked around me/ as if it expected to find through that black air/ that blew about me, another traveler (53-57).


"'We see with eyes asquint, like those whose twisted sight/ can make out only the far-off," he said,/ "for the King of All still grants us that much light" (99-102).


Canto XII


As a bull that breaks its chains just when the knife/ had struck its death-blow, cannot stand nor run/ but leaps from side to side with its last life--/ so danced the Minotaur, and my shrewd Guide/ cries out: "Run now! While he is blind with rage! Into the pass, quick, and get over the side!" (21-27).


Canto XIII


As a green branch with one end all aflame/ will hiss and sputter sap out of the other/ as the air escapes--so from that trunk there came/ words and blood together, gout by gout (40-43).


"It falls into the wood, and landing there,/ whatever fortune flings it, it strikes root,/ and there it sprouts, lusty as any tare,/ shoots up a sapling, and becomes a tree" (97-100).


We waited by the trunk, but it said no more;/ and waiting, we were startled by a noise/ that grew through all the wood. Just such a roar/ and trembling as one feels when the boar and chase/ approach his stand, the beasts and branches crashing/ and clashing in the heat of the fierce race (109-114).


Canto XIV


Like those Alexander met in the hot regions/ of India, flames raining from the sky/ to fall still unextinguished on his legions:/ whereat he formed his ranks, and at their head/set the example, trampling the hot ground/ for fear the tongues of fire might join and spread--/so so in Hell descended the long rain/ upon the damned, kindling the sand like tinder/ under flint and steel, doubling the pain (28-36).


Canto XV


They stared at us/ as men at evening by the new moon's light/ stare at one another when they pass by/ on a dark road, pointing their eyebrows toward us/ as an old tailor squints at his needle's eye (17-21).


I did not dare descend to his own level/ but kept my head inclined, as one who walks/ in reverence meditating good and evil (43-45).


"Remember my Treasure, in which I still live on:/ I ask no more." He turned then, and he seemed, / across that plain, like one of those who run for the green cloth at Verona; and of those, / more like the one who wins, than those who lose (118-122).


Canto XVI


As naked and anointed champions do/ in feeling out their grasp and their advantage/ before they close in for the thrust or blow--/so circling, each one stared up at my height,/ and as their feet moved left around the circle,/ their necks kept turning backward to the right (22-27).


But here I cannot be still: Reader, I swear/ by the lines of my Comedy--so may it live--/ that I saw swimming up through that foul air/ a shape to astonish the most doughty soul,/ a shape like one returning through the sea/ from working loose an anchor run afoul/ of something on the bottom--so it rose,/ its arms spread upward and its feet drawn close (127-134).


Canto XVII


As a ferry sometimes lies along the strand,/ part beached and part afloat; and as the beaver,/ up yonder in the guzzling Germans' land,/ squats halfway up the bank when a fight is on--/ just so lay that most ravenous of beasts/ on the rim which which bounds the burning sand with stone./ His tail twitched in the void beyond that lip,/ thrashing, and twisting up the envenomed form/ which, like a scorpion's stinger, armed the tip (19-27).


Like one so close to the quaternary chill/ that his nails are already pale and his flesh trembles/ at the very sight of shade or a cool rill--/so did I tremble at each frightful word (79-83).


As a small ship slides from a beaching or its pier,/ backward, backward--so that monster slipped/ back from the rim. And when he had drawn clear/ he swung about, and stretching out his tail/ he worked it like an eel, and with his paws/ he gathered in the air, while I turned pale (93-99).


As a flight-worn falcon sinks down wearily/ though neither bird nor lure has signalled it,/ the falconer crying out: "What! spent already!"--/ that turns and turns and in a hundred spinning gyres/ sulks from her master's call, sullen and proud--/ so to that bottom lit by endless fires/ the monster Geryon circled and fell,/ setting us down at the foot of the precipice/ of ragged rock on the eight shelf of Hell./ And once freed of our weight, he shot from there/ into the dark like an arrow into air (121-131).