The foot of the hill
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Ma poi ch’ i’ fui al piè d’ un colle giunto, là dove terminava quella valle che m’ avea di paura il cor compunto,
But after I had come to the foot of a hill, at the point where the valley ended that had pierced my heart with fear,
He comes to the end of the valley of fear, at the base of a hill.
The long night is over and the ground begins to rise. Dante marks the turn geographically — the valley <i>ends</i>, a hill begins — because the soul's recovery, in this poem, is always a change of terrain before it is a change of heart.
<i>Compunto</i> is a needle-word: the fear did not merely visit the heart, it punctured it. The same root gives us <i>compunction</i>. The wound is what makes the looking-up in the next line matter.
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Inferno 1.13 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/1.13/