As autumn leaves fall
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Come d’ autunno si levan le foglie l’ una appresso de l’ altra, fin che ’l ramo vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie,
As in autumn the leaves lift off one after another, until the branch sees all its spoils upon the ground,
As in autumn the leaves fall one after another until the branch sees all its spoils on the ground,
Dante reaches for one of the poem's most beautiful similes to describe one of its bleakest sights. The souls dropping into Charon's boat are like autumn leaves falling from a bough, <i>l'una appresso de l'altra</i>, one after another, until the branch stands bare.
The borrowed grandeur is deliberate — the image comes down from Virgil and Homer, who likened the generations of the dead to falling leaves. But Dante sharpens it: the branch <i>vede</i>, sees, its own leaves on the ground, as if the tree watched itself being stripped. The comparison lends the damned a strange, sorrowful loveliness, and makes their fall feel as natural, and as final, as a season's turning.
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Inferno 3.112 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/dante-inferno/3.112/