Dante Alighieri’s poems stand at the foundation of Italian literature and have shaped Western poetry for centuries. Writing in the late 13th and early 14th century, Dante is best known for The Divine Comedy, an epic poetic masterpiece that combines philosophy, theology, politics, and deep personal emotion.
The Divine Comedy—divided into Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—is written in terza rima, a complex rhyme scheme Dante perfected. Through a symbolic journey of the soul after death, Dante explores sin, redemption, justice, and divine love. His vivid imagery, especially in Inferno, has influenced countless poets, artists, and thinkers, making abstract moral ideas feel intensely real and human.
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| Dante alighieri |
Beyond the epic, Dante’s earlier lyrical poems, collected in La Vita Nuova, reveal a softer, more intimate voice. These poems center on his idealized love for Beatrice, blending romantic emotion with spiritual devotion. Here, Dante transforms personal love into a path toward moral and spiritual awakening.
- Dante’s greatest poetic achievement lies in his use of the vernacular Italian instead of Latin, making poetry accessible to ordinary people and helping to standardize the Italian language. His poems unite earthly passion with divine vision, marking a bridge between medieval thought and the humanistic spirit of the Renaissance.
Sonnet: Beauty Of Her Face
For certain he hath seen all perfectness
Who among other ladies hath seen mine:
They that go with her humbly should combine
To thank their God for such peculiar grace.
So perfect is the beauty of her face
That it begets in no wise any sigh
Of envy, but draws round her a clear line
Of love, and blessed faith, and gentleness.
Merely the sight of her makes all things bow:
Not she herself alone is holier
Than all; but hers, through her, are raised above.
From all her acts such lovely graces flow
That truly one may never think of her
Without a passion of exceeding love.
Sestina of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni
By Dante Alighieri
Translated By Dante Gabriel Rossetti
To the dim light and the large circle of shade
I have clomb, and to the whitening of the hills,
There where we see no color in the grass.
Natheless my longing loses not its green,
It has so taken root in the hard stone
Which talks and hears as though it were a lady.
Utterly frozen is this youthful lady,
Even as the snow that lies within the shade;
For she is no more moved than is the stone
By the sweet season which makes warm the hills
And alters them afresh from white to green
Covering their sides again with flowers and grass.
When on her hair she sets a crown of grass
The thought has no more room for other lady,
Because she weaves the yellow with the green
So well that Love sits down there in the shade,–
Love who has shut me in among low hills
Faster than between walls of granite-stone.
She is more bright than is a precious stone;
The wound she gives may not be healed with grass:
I therefore have fled far o’er plains and hills
For refuge from so dangerous a lady;
But from her sunshine nothing can give shade,–
Not any hill, nor wall, nor summer-green.
A while ago, I saw her dressed in green,–
So fair, she might have wakened in a stone
This love which I do feel even for her shade;
And therefore, as one woos a graceful lady,
I wooed her in a field that was all grass
Girdled about with very lofty hills.
Yet shall the streams turn back and climb the hills
Before Love’s flame in this damp wood and green
Burn, as it burns within a youthful lady,
For my sake, who would sleep away in stone
My life, or feed like beasts upon the grass,
Only to see her garments cast a shade.
How dark soe’er the hills throw out their shade,
Under her summer green the beautiful lady
Covers it, like a stone cover’d in grass.
VII. Sonnet [“Upon a day, came Sorrow in to me”]
By Dante Alighieri
Translated By Dante Gabriel Rossetti
on the 9th of June 1290
Upon a day, came Sorrow in to me,
Saying, "I’ve come to stay with thee a while;"
And I perceived that she had usher'd Bile
And Pain into my house for company.
Wherefore I said, "Go forth—away with thee!"
But like a Greek she answer'd, full of guile,
And went on arguing in an easy style.
Then, looking, I saw Love come silently,
Habited in black raiment, smooth and new,
Having a black hat set upon his hair;
And certainly the tears he shed were true.
So that I ask'd, "What ails thee, trifler?"
Answering he said: "A grief to be gone through;
For our own lady’s dying, brother dear."
From “Vita Nuova” [To every captive soul and gentle heart]
translated from the Italian by Joseph Luzzi
To every captive soul and gentle heart,
I now address these words of mine to you
In hope you will return with a reply,
As I salute our lord, the god of Love.
A third of night already had eclipsed
The shining of the brightest stars on high,
When suddenly Love came before my eyes—
The thought of him still haunts my troubled mind.
He held my heart in hand and seemed all joy,
My sleeping lady wrapped inside his arms.
Then he awakened her and she, in fright,
Began to humbly eat my burning heart.
And then I saw him disappear in tears.
