All 24 Uses
semblance
in
The Divine Comedy -- translated by Longfellow
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- After the voice had ceased and quiet was,
Four mighty shades I saw approaching us;
Semblance had they nor sorrowful nor glad.†Canto 1.1-11 * - The face was as the face of a just man,
Its semblance outwardly was so benign,
And of a serpent all the trunk beside.†Canto 1.12-22 - Because he wished to see too far before him
Behind he looks, and backward goes his way:
Behold Tiresias, who his semblance changed,
When from a male a female he became,
His members being all of them transformed;
And afterwards was forced to strike once more
The two entangled serpents with his rod,
Ere he could have again his manly plumes.†Canto 1.12-22 - A painted people there below we found,
Who went about with footsteps very slow,
Weeping and in their semblance tired and vanquished.†Canto 1.23-34 - Inferno: Canto XXIV
In that part of the youthful year wherein
The Sun his locks beneath Aquarius tempers,
And now the nights draw near to half the day,
What time the hoar-frost copies on the ground
The outward semblance of her sister white,
But little lasts the temper of her pen,
The husbandman, whose forage faileth him,
Rises, and looks, and seeth the champaign
All gleaming white, whereat he beats his flank,
Returns in doors, and up and down laments,
Like a poor wretch, who knows not what to do;†Canto 1.23-34 - Whereat I turned me round, and saw before me
And underfoot a lake, that from the frost
The semblance had of glass, and not of water.†Canto 1.23-34 - When in advance so far we had proceeded,
That it my Master pleased to show to me
The creature who once had the beauteous semblance,
He from before me moved and made me stop,
Saying: "Behold Dis, and behold the place
Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself."†Canto 1.23-34 - A long beard and with white hair intermingled
He wore, in semblance like unto the tresses,
Of which a double list fell on his breast.†Canto 2.1-11 - He who sits highest, and the semblance bears
Of having what he should have done neglected,
And to the others' song moves not his lips,
Rudolph the Emperor was, who had the power
To heal the wounds that Italy have slain,
So that through others slowly she revives.†Canto 2.1-11 - As, that some memory may exist of them,
Above the buried dead their tombs in earth
Bear sculptured on them what they were before;
Whence often there we weep for them afresh,
From pricking of remembrance, which alone
To the compassionate doth set its spur;
So saw I there, but of a better semblance
In point of artifice, with figures covered
Whate'er as pathway from the mount projects.†Canto 2.12-22 - Since afterwards it takes from this its semblance,
It is called shade; and thence it organizes
Thereafter every sense, even to the sight.†Canto 2.23-33 - A little farther on, seven trees of gold
In semblance the long space still intervening
Between ourselves and them did counterfeit;
But when I had approached so near to them
The common object, which the sense deceives,
Lost not by distance any of its marks,
The faculty that lends discourse to reason
Did apprehend that they were candlesticks,
And in the voices of the song "Hosanna!"†Canto 2.23-33 - When I upon my margin had such post
That nothing but the stream divided us,
Better to see I gave my steps repose;
And I beheld the flamelets onward go,
Leaving behind themselves the air depicted,
And they of trailing pennons had the semblance,
So that it overhead remained distinct
With sevenfold lists, all of them of the colours
Whence the sun's bow is made, and Delia's girdle.†Canto 2.23-33 - As soon as I became aware of them,
Esteeming them as mirrored semblances,
To see of whom they were, mine eyes I turned,
And nothing saw, and once more turned them forward
Direct into the light of my sweet Guide,
Who smiling kindled in her holy eyes.†Canto 3.1-11 - Here it was silent, and it had the semblance
Of being turned elsewhither, by the wheel
On which it entered as it was before.†Canto 3.1-11 - Their concord and their joyous semblances,
The love, the wonder, and the sweet regard,
They made to be the cause of holy thoughts;
So much so that the venerable Bernard
First bared his feet, and after so great peace
Ran, and, in running, thought himself too slow.†Canto 3.1-11 - I with my sight returned through one and all
The sevenfold spheres, and I beheld this globe
Such that I smiled at its ignoble semblance;
And that opinion I approve as best
Which doth account it least; and he who thinks
Of something else may truly be called just.†Canto 3.12-22 - The regal mantle of the volumes all
Of that world, which most fervid is and living
With breath of God and with his works and ways,
Extended over us its inner border,
So very distant, that the semblance of it
There where I was not yet appeared to me.†Canto 3.23-33 - Before mine eyes were standing the four torches
Enkindled, and the one that first had come
Began to make itself more luminous;
And even such in semblance it became
As Jupiter would become, if he and Mars
Were birds, and they should interchange their feathers.†Canto 3.23-33 - My sight was following up their semblances,
And followed till the medium, by excess,
The passing farther onward took from it;
Whereat the Lady, who beheld me freed
From gazing upward, said to me: "Cast down
Thy sight, and see how far thou art turned round."†Canto 3.23-33 - Then as a folk who have been under masks
Seem other than before, if they divest
The semblance not their own they disappeared in,
Thus into greater pomp were changed for me
The flowerets and the sparks, so that I saw
Both of the Courts of Heaven made manifest.†Canto 3.23-33 - The semblance of it is all made of rays
Reflected from the top of Primal Motion,
Which takes therefrom vitality and power.†Canto 3.23-33 - As he who peradventure from Croatia
Cometh to gaze at our Veronica,
Who through its ancient fame is never sated,
But says in thought, the while it is displayed,
"My Lord, Christ Jesus, God of very God,
Now was your semblance made like unto this?"†Canto 3.23-33 - Not because more than one unmingled semblance
Was in the living light on which I looked,
For it is always what it was before;
But through the sight, that fortified itself
In me by looking, one appearance only
To me was ever changing as I changed.†Canto 3.23-33
Definitions:
-
(1)
(semblance) the outward appearance of something -- especially when the reality is different or incomplete
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)