The City of Dis — Canto IX
Canto 9 of Inferno by Dante Alighieri
That colour which cowardice brought out on me, Beholding my Conductor backward turn, Sooner repressed within him his new colour. He stopped attentive, like a man who listens, Because the eye could not conduct him far Through the black air, and through the heavy fog.
"Yet it behoves us win this fight," he said, Beginning; "If not . . . Such offered to us. O how I long that some one here arrive!"
Well I perceived, as soon as the beginning 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 drew the word he left unfinished Perchance to a worse meaning than he had.
