------------------------------------------------------------------------ [461] “The fair planet which kindles love.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ While they are still on the shore the sun reaches the point just below the horizon, for he is described as just touching the western horizon of the other hemisphere, whose zenith is above Jerusalem, and night is just rising on the eastern horizon of that hemisphere. Where the poets are the rose colour in the east is turning to orange, just before the sun rises. It rises over their horizon while they are watching a light far over the sea, which with almost incredible rapidity draws near, becomes visible as a vessel, touches land, the spirits disembark, and the celestial pilot “sen gì, come venne, veloce.”[462] The sun has now driven Capricorn from the mid sky with his bright beams, that is, the stars have become invisible in bright daylight, and fig. 46 shows that when Aries rises over the eastern horizon Capricorn will be overhead. But the sun is still very low, so swift was the coming of the spirits, for Dante’s shadow is not yet visible to them: it is by his breathing that they perceive he is a living man. It is only after the meeting with Casella, and the dispersal of the spirits by Cato, that the sun, still red with sunrise tints, makes Dante’s shadow fall in front of him as the poets are walking westward towards the mountain. He is alarmed not to see Virgil’s shadow on the ground beside it, and is told that the body within which Virgil once had cast a shadow lies buried in a country where it is now the time of vespers. That is, in Italy it is three o’clock in the afternoon: hence in Purgatory, where they now are, it is six in the morning. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [462] “Departed, as he came, swiftly.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: Fig. 46. The Signs of the Zodiac as seen at sunrise from the Mountain of Purgatory at the autumnal equinox there (the _vernal_ equinox in the Northern Hemisphere). _Purg._ ii. 55. At 6 a.m. Aries is just rising, Libra the opposite constellation is just setting, while Capricornus has just reached the meridian. The signs follow one another in their diurnal course over the sky in the direction shown by the arrows, circling parallel to the celestial equator.]