Here pity only lives when it is dead - Virgil

There is no greater sorrow
than thinking back upon a happy time
in misery--

your soul has been assailed by cowardice,
which often weighs so heavily on a man--
distracting him from honorable trials--
as phantoms frighten beasts when shadows fall.

Through me is the way to the city of woe.
Through me is the way to sorrow eternal.
Through me is the way to the lost below. Justice moved my architect supernal.
I was constructed by divine power,
supreme wisdom, and love primordial.
Before me no created things were.
Save those eternal, and eternal I abide.
Abandon all hope, you who enter.

Milton was the gold standard of religious poets for English and American scholars. But Milton wrote of Hell and Heaven from above and below, respectively, not from the inside: safer advantages.

I felt for the tormented whirlwinds
Damned for their carnal sins
Committed when they let their passions rule their reason.