Cross-cut: the forest.

The Divine Comedy--Inferno
Dante Alighieri
(trans Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Inferno: Canto I

Midway on the journey of our life
I base myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been missing

Ah me! in what manner hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, scraggy and stern,
Which in the real thought renews the fear.

thus bitter is it, death is little more;
on the contrary of the good to treat, which there I base
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.

I cannot well repeat in what manner there I entered,
for a like reason full was I ...