“The sacred tree ’midst the fair orchard grew, The phoenix Truth did on it rest And built his perfumed nest, That right Porphyrian tree which did true Logic show; Each leaf did learned notions give And th’ apples were demonstrative; So clear their color and divine The very shade they cast did other lights outshine.”

This tree of Temptation, however, is hardly the tree of Knowledge, though sprung from it, as Dante says of the next, in Canto XXIV 117. It is meant only to increase the torment of the starving souls beneath it, by holding its fresh and dewy fruit beyond their reach. ↩

John 2:3:⁠—