Dante: A Sonnet
O Dante, why is it that I adoringStill lift my songs and vows to thy stern face,And sunset to the morning grey gives placeTo find me still thy restless verse exploring?
Lucia prays not for my poor soul's resting;For me Matilda tends no sacred fount;For me in vain the sacred lovers mount,O'er star and star to the eternal soaring.
I hate the Holy Empire, and the crownAnd sword alike relentless would have rivenFrom thy good Frederic on Olona's plains.
Empire and Church to ruin have gone down,And yet for them thy songs did scale high heaven.Great Jove is dead. Only the song remains.
Words in this poem
- relentless a.
- Unmoved by appeals for sympathy or forgiveness; insensible to the distresses of others; destitute of tenderness; unrelenting; unyielding; unpitying; as, a prey to relentless despotism.
- jove n.
- The chief divinity of the ancient Romans; Jupiter. [L. Jupiter, gen. Jovis, OL. Jovis, nom. & gen. for Djovis; akin to E. Tuesday. See Tuesday, and cf. Jupiter.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dante: A Sonnet is in the public domain. This text is taken from By Frank Sewall (London: Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1893), Project Gutenberg ebook #56711, the Frank Sewall translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Giosuè Carducci, Dante: A Sonnet, in Poems of Giosuè Carducci (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56711, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carducci-poems/dante.html, id L26518.
Form and metre
Dante: A Sonnet is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABBA, complete in 2 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBA adoringA · faceB · placeB · exploringA
- 2 ABBA restingA · fountB · mountB · soaringA
- 3 D-E crownD · riven · plainsE
- 4 D-E downD · heaven · remainsE
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O Dante, why is it that I adoring | 11 | ·/˘·····˘/˘ |
| Still lift my songs and vows to thy stern face, | 10 | ·········· |
| And sunset to the morning grey gives place | 10 | ·/···/˘··· |
| To find me still thy restless verse exploring? | 11 | ·····/˘·˘/˘ |
| Lucia prays not for my poor soul's resting; | 10 | /˘······/˘ |
| For me Matilda tends no sacred fount; | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| For me in vain the sacred lovers mount, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| O'er star and star to the eternal soaring. | 11 | ······˘/˘/˘ |
| I hate the Holy Empire, and the crown | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| And sword alike relentless would have riven | 11 | ··˘/˘/˘··/˘ |
| From thy good Frederic on Olona's plains. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Empire and Church to ruin have gone down, | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| And yet for them thy songs did scale high heaven. | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Great Jove is dead. Only the song remains. | 10 | ····/˘··˘/ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.