As under its shields to save itself a troop turns and wheels with its banner, before it all can change about, that soldiery of the celestial realm which was in advance had wholly gone past us before its front beam[1] had bent the chariot round. Then to the wheels the ladies returned, and the griffon moved his blessed burden, in such wise however that no feather of him shook. The beautiful lady who had drawn me at the ford, and Statius and I were following the wheel which made its orbit with the smaller arc. So walking through the lofty wood, empty through fault of her who trusted to the serpent, an angelic song set the time to our steps. Perhaps an arrow loosed from the bow had in three flights reached such a distance as we had advanced, when Beatrice descended. I heard “Adam!” murmured by all:[2] then they circled a plant despoiled of flowers and of other leafage on every bough.[3] Its branches, which so much the wider spread the higher up they are,[4] would be wondered at for height by the Indians in their woods. [1] Its pole. [2] In reproach of him who had in disobedience tasted of the fruit of this tree. [3] After the sin of Adam the plant was despoiled of virtue till the coming of Christ. [4] The branches of the tree of knowledge spread widest as they are nearest to the Divine Source of truth. “Blessed art thou, Griffon, that thou dost not break off with thy beak of this wood sweet to the taste, since the belly is ill racked thereby.”[1] Thus around the sturdy tree the others cried; and the animal of two natures: “So is preserved the seed of all righteousness.”[2] And turning to the pole that he had drawn, he dragged it to the foot of the widowed trunk, and that which was of it[3] he left bound to it. [1] “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”—Romans, v. 19. [2] “That as sin had reigned unto deaths, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ, our Lord.”—Id., v. 21. [3] This pole, the mystic type of the cross of Christ, supposed to have been made of the wood of this tree. As our plants, when the great light falls downward mingled with that which shines behind the celestial Carp,[1] become swollen, and then renew themselves, each in its own color, ere the sun yoke his coursers under another star, so disclosing a color less than of roses and more than of violets, the plant renewed itself, which first had its boughs so bare.[2] I did not understand the hymn, and it is not sung here,[3] which that folk then sang, nor did I hear the melody to the end. [1] In this spring, when the Sun is in Aries, the sign which follows that of the Pisces here termed the Carp.