Divina Commedia: Third Sonnet - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow continues his sonnet cycle of poems inspired by the work of Dante, as well as by the grandeur of a beautiful cathedral.

Divina Commedia: Third Sonnet

I enter, and I 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.”