All 14 Uses of

chasm

in

Dante's Inferno -- translated by Cary

I thus: "Instructor, clearly thy discourse Proceeds, distinguishing the hideous chasm And its inhabitants with skill exact.†
Canto 1.1-11

…stream On this side Trento struck, should'ring the wave, Or loos'd by earthquake or for lack of prop; For from the mountain's summit, whence it mov'd To the low level, so the headlong rock Is shiver'd, that some passage it might give To him who from above would pass; e'en such Into the chasm was that descent: and there At point of the disparted ridge lay stretch'd The infamy of Crete, detested brood Of the feign'd heifer: and at sight of us It gnaw'd itself, as one with rage distract.†
Canto 1.12-22

Soon as we to him arrive, A little further on mine eye beholds A tribe of spirits, seated on the sand Near the wide chasm.†
Canto 1.12-22

On our right hand new misery I saw, New pains, new executioners of wrath, That swarming peopled the first chasm.
Canto 1.12-22 *

chasm = a large and deep and steep-sided opening on the earth's surface

Hence in the second chasm we heard the ghosts, Who jibber in low melancholy sounds, With wide-stretch'd nostrils snort, and on themselves Smite with their palms.†
Canto 1.12-22

Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours Is the third chasm.†
Canto 1.12-22

Still earnest on the pitch I gaz'd, to mark All things whate'er the chasm contain'd, and those Who burn'd within.†
Canto 1.12-22

If the right coast Incline so much, that we may thence descend Into the other chasm, we shall escape Secure from this imagined pursuit.†
Canto 1.23-22

Down from the jutting beach Supine he cast him, to that pendent rock, Which closes on one part the other chasm.†
Canto 1.23-22

We from the bridge's head descended, where To the eighth mound it joins, and then the chasm Opening to view, I saw a crowd within Of serpents terrible, so strange of shape And hideous, that remembrance in my veins Yet shrinks the vital current.†
Canto 1.23-22

As in that season, when the sun least veils His face that lightens all, what time the fly Gives way to the shrill gnat, the peasant then Upon some cliff reclin'd, beneath him sees Fire-flies innumerous spangling o'er the vale, Vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies: With flames so numberless throughout its space Shone the eighth chasm, apparent, when the depth Was to my view expos'd.†
Canto 1.23-22

…A pile so high, as Rome's historian writes Who errs not, with the multitude, that felt The grinding force of Guiscard's Norman steel, And those the rest, whose bones are gather'd yet At Ceperano, there where treachery Branded th' Apulian name, or where beyond Thy walls, O Tagliacozzo, without arms The old Alardo conquer'd; and his limbs One were to show transpierc'd, another his Clean lopt away; a spectacle like this Were but a thing of nought, to the' hideous sight Of the ninth chasm.†
Canto 1.23-22

But Minos to this chasm last of the ten, For that I practis'd alchemy on earth, Has doom'd me.†
Canto 1.23-22

Definition: