– The Dark Forest (3:14) –

In the year 1300, at the age of thirty-five, Dante, sleepy and numb, finds himself lost in a dark forest.

Canto I, 1-9
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.