A Tribute to Dante Allighieri | Teen Ink

A Tribute to Dante Allighieri

January 6, 2010
By Anonymous

God has slammed his hammer down,
And hearing your final sentence
Fallen angels clutter around.

The ravenous refuse begins to swallow,
Your sins will soon be punished,
As they guide you through Satan's Hollow

There you meet the eyes of ghostly Charon,
And with the ferryman you float the flume across
to Point of No Return, 'cross Acheron.

When you reach the end, so alone,
Meet you will Minos, your final judge,
And it will show you your new home.

Pass by the tossed and tormented by the torrent
Of lust and passion and physical love,
For this is not what the judge did warrant,

And continue down the infernal decline,
To the downpour of ice,
And the engrossing, gluttonous blind:

Terrified with each of Cerberus' growls,
And sitting in the sick sink of sinful sleet,
With strike by claw, each damned soul howls.

Then you will keep walking past the war waged
Between to sides of greed,
Tormented by conflict eternally engaged,

Those who wasted against the hoarders,
But you had your moderation,
So continue past the fourth circle's borders.

Welcome to your new hellish home
In the swamp of Styx you will see
Souls tearing each other to the bone.

Those fueled by wrath battle above
The drowning souls of the sullen,
Who for their life, they held no love.

They did lay in their waste while alive
Ignoring the gifts from God above,
Thus into the sludge, they had to dive.

And now you must join them in the mud,
Where forever you will try to sing
some hymn into the sludge and blood.

God gave you life; you lived as a shell,
And now you will lie forever,
The Fifth step down in Dante's Hell

The author's comments:
A piece I wrote as a tribue to Dante after reading Dante's Inferno. An imitation of Terza Rima, and a poem based on Inferno, I figured this would be a good tribute.

Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.