All 7 Uses
semblance
in
Dante's Inferno -- 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
Definitions:
-
(1)
(semblance) the outward appearance of something -- especially when the reality is different or incomplete
- (2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)