At the end of the refectory was a dais with a table at which Homer took his seat, while another long table stretched down the middle of the hall; but Astulf saw with surprise that three places were laid on the upper board, though the King was apparently to sit there alone.  But Virgil explained the reason, and said:  “You must understand, Sir Duke, that it is our custom to lay a place for every poet who will ever ascend to this Earthly Paradise; and as yet there is none here worthy to sit beside our Father Homer.  But after some five hundred and fifty years the seat at his left hand will be taken by the Florentine DANTE, who will find here the rest and happiness denied to him in his lifetime.  The place on the right of the King, however, will remain vacant three hundred years more; but then it will be filled by a countryman of your own, and SHAKESPEARE will receive the honor due to him as the third great poet of the world.”  With these words Virgil took his seat at the head of the lower table, and motioned Astulf to an empty place at his right hand, saying:  “This seat also will remain a long while vacant, being kept for another of your countrymen, who will come hither after more than a thousand years.  He will be reviled and slandered in his lifetime; but after his death the very fools who abused him will pretend to admire and understand him, while here among his brethren he will be welcomed with joy and high honor.”  So Astulf sat in the seat of this poet to be honored in the future, and made a hearty dinner off nectar and ambrosia, “which are mighty fine viands,” as he afterward told his friends at home; “but a hungry man, on the whole, would prefer good roast beef and a slice of plum pudding for a steady diet.”  Dinner being over, the pilgrim was led by the obliging poet to a pathway past the silent and lonesome River of Oblivion, where most mortal names and fames are forever lost, only a few being rescued from its waves and set on golden scrolls in the temple of Immortality.

Now when they had looked on for a while at this notable sight they left the River Oblivion and proceeded to the Valley of Lost Lumber.  It was a long though narrow valley shut in between two lofty mountain ridges, and in it were stored away all the things which men lose or waste on earth.  Here they found an infinite number of lovers’ sighs, beyond which lay the useless moments lost in folly and crime, and the long wasted leisure of ignorant and idle men.  Next came the vain desires and foolish wishes that can never take effect, and these were heaped together in such quantities that they blocked up the greater part of the valley.  Here, too, were mountains of gold and silver which foolish politicians throw away in bribing voters to return them to Congress; a little farther on was an enormous pile of garlands with steel gins concealed among their flowers, which Virgil explained to be flatteries; while a heap of grasshoppers which had burst themselves in keeping up their shrill, monotonous