suffering" consisted in "hopeless desire!"

Dante was struck with great sorrow when he heard this, knowing how many
good men must be in that place. He inquired if no one had ever been
taken out of it into heaven. Virgil told him there had, and he named
them; to wit, Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, King David, obedient Abraham the
patriarch, and Isaac, and Jacob, with their children, and Rachel, for
whom Jacob did so much,--and "many more;" adding, however, that there
was no instance of salvation before theirs.

Journeying on through spirits as thick as leaves, Dante perceived a
lustre at a little distance, and observing shapes in it evidently of
great dignity, inquired who they were that thus lived apart from the
rest. Virgil said that heaven thus favoured them by reason of their
renown on earth. A voice was then heard exclaiming, "Honour and glory to
the lofty poet! Lo, his shade returns." Dante then saw four other noble
figures coming towards them, of aspect neither sad nor cheerful.

"Observe him with the sword in his hand," said Virgil, as they were
advancing. "That is Homer, the poets' sovereign. Next to him comes
Horace the satirist; then Ovid; and the last is Lucan."

"And thus I beheld," says Dante, "the bright school of the loftiest of
poets, who flies above the rest like an eagle."

For a while the illustrious spirits talked together, and then turned to
the Florentine with a benign salutation, at which his master smiled and
"further honour they did me," adds the father of Italian poetry, "for
they admitted me of their tribe; so that to a band of that high account
I added a sixth." [7]