The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 18/Number 105/On Translating the Divina Commedia

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.

SECOND SONNET.

I enter, and see thee in the gloom
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!
And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.
The air is filled with some unknown perfume;
The congregation of the dead make room
For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine;
Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine
The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.
From the confessionals I hear arise
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,
And lamentations from the crypts below;
And then a voice celestial that begins
With the pathetic words, "Although your sins
As scarlet be," and ends with "as the snow."