At the end of Chapter one in Dante’s Purgatory, Virgil picks up a reed at the shores – a symbol of Humility – and girds the waist of the pilgrim as Cato had instructed them. Then comes one of the most beautiful and deepest metaphors of the whole canticle:
Oh, miracle! When he pulled out the reed,
immediately a second humble plant
sprang up from where the first one had been picked.