And now, across the turbid waves, there passed
a reboantic fracas—horrid sound,
enough to make both of the shorelines quake:

a sound not other than a wind’s when, wild
because it must contend with warmer currents,
it strikes against the forest without let,

shattering, beating down, bearing off branches,
as it moves proudly, clouds of dust before it,
and puts to flight both animals and shepherds.

He freed my eyes and said: “Now let your optic
nerve turn directly toward that ancient foam,
there where the mist is thickest and most acrid.”

As frogs confronted by their enemy,
the snake, will scatter underwater till
each hunches in a heap along the bottom,

so did the thousand ruined souls I saw
take flight before a figure crossing Styx
who walked as if on land and with dry soles.

He thrust away the thick air from his face,
waving his left hand frequently before him;
that seemed the only task that wearied him.

I knew well he was Heaven’s messenger,
and I turned toward my master; and he made
a sign that I be still and bow before him.

How full of high disdain he seemed to me!
He came up to the gate, and with a wand,
he opened it, for there was no resistance.

“O you cast out of Heaven, hated crowd,”
were his first words upon that horrid threshold,
“why do you harbor this presumptuousness?

Why are you so reluctant to endure
that Will whose aim can never be cut short,
and which so often added to your hurts?

What good is it to thrust against the fates?
Your Cerberus, if you remember well,
for that, had both his throat and chin stripped clean.”

At that he turned and took the filthy road,
and did not speak to us, but had the look
of one who is obsessed by other cares

than those that press and gnaw at those before him;
and we moved forward, on into the city,
in safety, having heard his holy words.

-Inferno, Canto IX

Good stuff. Whose translation? I like Ciardi's, but this is pretty good.