See how he scorns any human contrivance, wanting no oar nor any sail between shores so remote, except for his own wings.

From now on you will see such emissaries. All that time until the first white things appeared to be wings my master uttered not a word, and when he was sure who the pilot was he shouted, “Down, down on your knees! There is the angel of God. Then there appeared to me on each side of it something that I could not make out, something white, and another was emerging little by little below it. When I had taken my eyes away from it only for a moment to question my leader, I saw it again grown brighter and larger. We were still beside the edge of the sea like people who are thinking about their journey who in their hearts go and their bodies stay and there, as when Mars in the flush of dawn reddens low in the west through the heavy vapors, over the floor of the ocean, may I see it again as it appeared to me: across the sea a light was coming so swiftly that no flight could compare with its motion. By then the sun had come to the horizon the circle of whose meridian at its high point covers Jerusalem and Night, circling on the opposite side, was emerging from the Ganges with the Scales that fall out of her hands when she prevails, so that the white and vermilion cheeks of lovely Dawn, in the place where I was, were growing old and turning orange.

Dante alighieri purgatorio