Just halfway through life's journey
I reawoke to find myself in a dark wood
Far off course, the right way lost.
How hard it is to tell what this
Wild, harsh, forbidding wood was like
Whose merest memory brings back my fear;
For only death exceeds its bitterness.
But I found goodness there; I'll deal with that
As I describe the various things I saw.
~Opening lines from Dante's Inferno
