Poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dante

Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of gloom,
  With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes,
  Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise,
  Like Farinata from his fiery tomb.
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom;
  Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,
  What soft compassion glows, as in the skies
  The tender stars their clouded lamps relume!
Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks
  By Fra Hilario in his diocese,
  As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks,
The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease;
  And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks,
  Thy voice along the cloister whispers, "Peace!"

1. To the River Rhone
2. To the River Yvette
3. Oliver Basselin
4. King Olaf’s War-Horns
5. The Crew of the Long Serpent

Richard Garnett Dante ("Poet, whose unscarr'd feet have trodden Hell")

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