Then dark with dripping blood it gave a howl <br />and cried again: 'Our damaged branches ache! <br />Your pillage maims me! Can't you feel at all? <br /> <br />We who were men are now this barren brake. <br />You'd grant us your respect and stay your hand <br />were we a thicket not of souls but snakes.' <br /> <br />As wood still green starts burning at one end <br />and from its unlit end the burning stick <br />drips sap, and hisses with escaping wind, <br /> <br />so from the broken stump there oozed a mix <br />of words and blood: a frothy babbling gore. <br />I dropped the branch. My fear had made me sick. <br /> <br />'Poor wounded soul, could he have grasped before,' <br />my sage replied, 'what now he sees is true, <br />and blindly trusted in poetic lore, <br /> <br />then he need not have so insulted you. <br />But as there was no other way to learn <br />I urged him to a test that grieved me too. <br /> <br />Tell us who you were, that he, in turn, <br />can set your honor freshly back in style <br />among those he will teach when he returns.' <br /> <br />The trunk: 'Your speech, by raising hope that I'll <br />regain repute, makes words arise in me. <br />I mean to talk, if you will stay a while: <br /> <br />I was the one entrusted with the keys <br />to Federigo's mind, and it was sweet <br />to share his thought and guard his strategy <br /> <br />for noble ventures secret in my keep — <br />so faithfully I filled this glorious post, <br />I gladly sacrificed my health and sleep...'<br /><br />Dante Alighieri<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-thorn-forest/
