Sonnet II on Dante's Divine Comedy by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
See the sender's note for more information!
Sender’s note: Hello all, Flynn here. Thanks for making it to the end, especially if you were with us from the start :) As I said a couple of months ago, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to continue the newsletter for its next intended cycle, but I hope to do so. In the meantime, in the Project Gutenberg text for Longfellow’s translation of the Comedy, the Appendix hosts six sonnets on the Comedy written by Longfellow. I thought it would be apt to send these out after we finished our rounds. Please enjoy!
SIX SONNETS ON DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
(1807-1882)
II
How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves
Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediaeval miracle of song!