The Story:  While the Poets pause for a little on the brink of the descent to the Seventh Circle, Virgil explains to Dante the arrangement of Hell.

"See now, my son: three narrowing circles wind
    Within these cliffs," thus he took up the tale,
    "Each under each, like those we've left behind.

Damned spirits fill them all; thou canst not fail
    To know them at a glance, though, if I state
    How and for what they're here pent up in jail.

Of all malicious wrong that earns Heaven's hate
    The end is injury; all such ends are won
    Either by force or fraud.  Both perpetrate

Evil to others; but since man alone
    Is capable of fraud, God hates that worst;
    The fraudulent lie lowest, then, and groan

Deepest.  Of these three circles, all the first
    Holds violent men; but as threefold may be
    Their victims, in three rings they are dispersed.

God, self, and neighbour—against all these three
    Force may be used; either to injure them
    Or theirs, as I shall show convincingly.

Man on his neighbour may bring death or mayhem
    By force; or damage his chattels, house, and lands
    By harsh extortions, pillage, or fire and flame;

So murderers, men who are violent of their hands,
    Robbers and plunderers, all find chastisement
    In the first ring, disposed in various bands.

Against themselves men may be violent,
    And their own lives or their own goods destroy;
    So they in the second ring in vain repent

Who rob themselves of your world, or make a toy
    Of fortune, gambling and wasting away their purse,
    And turn to weeping what was meant for joy.

Those men do violence to God, who curse
    And in their hearts deny Him, or defame
    His bounty and His Natural Universe;

So the third ring sets its seal on the double shame
    Of Sodom and of Cahors, and on the speech
    Of the froward heart, dishonouring God's great name.

Fraud, which gnaws at every conscience, may be a breach
    Of trust against the confiding, or deceive
    Such as repose no confidence; though each

Is fraud, the latter sort seems but to cleave
    The general bond of love and Nature's tie;
    So the second circle opens to receive

Hypoctires, flatterers, dealers in sorcery,
    Panders and cheats, and all such filthy stuff,
    With theft, and simony and barratry.

Fraud of the other sort forgets both love
    Of kind, and that love too whence is begot
    The special trust that's over and above;

So, in the smallest circle, that dark spot,
    Core of the universe and throne of Dis,
    The traitors lie; and their worm dieth not."