• A symbol of humility. Ruskin, Modern Painters , III 232, says:⁠— “There is a still deeper significance in the passage quoted, a little while ago, from Homer, describing Ulysses casting himself down on the rushes and the corngiving land at the river shore⁠—the rushes and corn being to him only good for rest and sustenance⁠—when we compare it with that in which Dante tells us he was ordered to descend to the shore of the lake as he entered Purgatory, to gather a rush , and gird himself with it, it being to him the emblem not only of rest, but of humility under chastisement, the rush (or reed) being the only plant which can grow there;⁠—‘no plant which bears leaves, or hardens its bark, can live on that shore, because it does not yield to the chastisement of its waves.’ It cannot but strike the reader singularly how deep and harmonious a significance runs through all these words of Dante⁠—how every syllable of them, the more we penetrate it, becomes a seed of farther thought! For follow up this image of the girding with the reed, under trial, and see to whose feet it will lead us.