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Famous Dante Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Dante poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous dante poems. These examples illustrate what a famous dante poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...>the co-operation of avengers. Of course they called on God, but he went his waydown among the lost people like Dante, downto the stinking fosse where the injuredlead the ugly life of the rejected, and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,our dishonest mood of denial,the concupiscence of the oppressor. If some traces of the autocratic pose,the paternal strictness he distrusted, st...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...CANTO I


 ONE night, when half my life behind me lay, 
 I wandered from the straight lost path afar. 
 Through the great dark was no releasing way; 
 Above that dark was no relieving star. 
 If yet that terrored night I think or say, 
 As death's cold hands its fears resuming are. 

 Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell, 
 The hopeless, ...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...LA DIVINA COMMEDIA di Dante Alighieri INFERNO


Inferno: Canto I



 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ch? la diritta via era smarrita.

 Ahi quanto a dir qual era ? cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura!

 Tant'? amara che poco ? pi? morte;

ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,

dir? de l'altr...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...Per me si va ne la citt? dolente, 
per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, 
per me si va tra la perduta gente . 

THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY, 
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN, 
THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST. 


Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: 
fecemi la divina podestate, 
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore . ...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...Love and the gentle heart are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind’s reasoning.

Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.

Then beauty in a virtuous...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...uib and cracker.

XXXIII.

This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot---
No mere display at the stone of Dante,
But a kind of sober Witanagemot
(Ex: ``Casa Guidi,'' _quod videas ante_)
Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence,
How Art may return that departed with her. 
Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's,
And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!

XXXIV.

How we shall prologize, how we shall perorate,
Utter fit things upon art and his...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
di Dante Alighieri
PARADISO



Paradiso: Canto I

 La gloria di colui che tutto move
per l'universo penetra, e risplende
in una parte pi? e meno altrove.
 Nel ciel che pi? de la sua luce prende
fu' io, e vidi cose che ridire
n? sa n? pu? chi di l? s? discende;
 perch? appressando s? al suo disire,
nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,
che dietro la memoria n...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
di Dante Alighieri
PURGATORIO



Purgatorio: Canto I

 Per correr miglior acque alza le vele
omai la navicella del mio ingegno,
che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele;
 e canterò di quel secondo regno
dove l'umano spirito si purga
e di salire al ciel diventa degno.
 Ma qui la morta poesì resurga,
o sante Muse, poi che vostro sono;
e qui Caliopè alquanto surg...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...yet to me
Barbaric king, or knight of chivalry,
Or the great queen herself, were poor and vain,
Beside the grave where Dante rests from pain.
His gilded shrine lies open to the air;
And cunning sculptor's hands have carven there
The calm white brow, as calm as earliest morn,
The eyes that flashed with passionate love and scorn,
The lips that sang of Heaven and of Hell,
The almond-face which Giotto drew so well,
The weary face of Dante; - to this day,
Here in his place of...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow,
to the short day and to the whitening hills,
when the colour is all lost from the grass,
though my desire will not lose its green,
so rooted is it in this hardest stone,
that speaks and feels as though it were a woman.

And likewise this heaven-born woman
stays frozen, like the snow in shadow,
and is un...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ncient temples classic, and castles strong and feudalistic, 
could none of them restrain her? 
Nor shades of Virgil and Dante—nor myriad memories, poems, old associations, magnetize and
 hold on to her? 
But that she ’s left them all—and here? 

Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see Her, 
The same Undying Soul of Earth’s, activity’s, beauty’s, heroism’s Expression, 
Out from her evolutions hither come—submerged the strata of her fo...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...I pardon thee
That all the All thou hadst for needy man
Was Nothing, and thy Best of being was
But not to be.

Worn Dante, I forgive
The implacable hates that in thy horrid hells
Or burn or freeze thy fellows, never loosed
By death, nor time, nor love.

And I forgive
Thee, Milton, those thy comic-dreadful wars
Where, armed with gross and inconclusive steel,
Immortals smite immortals mortalwise
And fill all heaven with folly.

Also thee,
Brave Aeschylus, thee I for...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...in a chair to rede of this sentence,* *learn to understand
Better than Virgil, while he was alive, what I have said*
Or Dante also.  Now let us ride blive,* *briskly
For I will holde company with thee,
Till it be so that thou forsake me."
"Nay," quoth this Sompnour, "that shall ne'er betide.
I am a yeoman, that is known full wide;
My trothe will I hold, as in this case;
For though thou wert the devil Satanas,
My trothe will I hold to thee, my brother,
As I hav...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...es beget
The blindworm Ignorance that slays the soul, O tarry yet!

For One at least there is, - He bears his name
From Dante and the seraph Gabriel, -
Whose double laurels burn with deathless flame
To light thine altar; He too loves thee well,
Who saw old Merlin lured in Vivien's snare,
And the white feet of angels coming down the golden stair,

Loves thee so well, that all the World for him
A gorgeous-coloured vestiture must wear,
And Sorrow take a purple diadem,
Or else be...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...the Man of Law's
Tale, the date is given as the "eight and twenty day of April,
that is messenger to May."

2. Dante, in the "Vita Nuova," distinguishes three classes of
pilgrims: palmieri - palmers who go beyond sea to the East,
and often bring back staves of palm-wood; peregrini, who go
the shrine of St Jago in Galicia; Romei, who go to Rome. Sir
Walter Scott, however, says that palmers were in the habit of
passing from shrine to shrine, living on charity -- pi...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ame. 

17
Say who be these light-bearded, sunburnt faces
In negligent and travel-stain'd array,
That in the city of Dante come to-day,
Haughtily visiting her holy places?
O these be noble men that hide their graces,
True England's blood, her ancient glory's stay,
By tales of fame diverted on their way
Home from the rule of oriental races. 
Life-trifling lions these, of gentle eyes
And motion delicate, but swift to fire
For honour, passionate where duty lies,
Most love...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...ngs of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten
thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's.
and from those of Dante or Shakespear, an infinite number.
But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows
better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.


A Memorable Fancy

Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire. who arose before an
Angel that sat on a cloud. and the Devil utterd these words.
The worship of God is. Honouring ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...round.


For there was Milton like a seraph strong,
Beside him Shakespeare bland and mild;
And there the world-worn Dante grasp'd his song,
And somewhat grimly smiled.


And there the Ionian father of the rest;
A million wrinkles carved his skin;
A hundred winters snow'd upon his breast,
From cheek and throat and chin.


Above, the fair hall-ceiling stately-set
Many an arch high up did lift,
And angels rising and descending met
With interchange of gift.


Belo...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...hem gentlemen called to be,
And bade us follow them in such degree.
Well can the wise poet of Florence,
That highte Dante, speak of this sentence:* *sentiment
Lo, in such manner* rhyme is Dante's tale. *kind of
'Full seld'* upriseth by his branches smale *seldom
Prowess of man, for God of his goodness
Wills that we claim of him our gentleness;' 12
For of our elders may we nothing claim
But temp'ral things that man may hurt and maim.
Eke every wight knows this as w...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...There is a gentle thought that often springs
to life in me, because it speaks of you.
Its reasoning about love’s so sweet and true,
the heart is conquered, and accepts these things.
‘Who is this’ the mind enquires of the heart,
‘who comes here to seduce our intellect?
Is his power so great we must reject
every other intellectual art?
The heart repl...Read more of this...

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