“In dream misdeemed I saw, as I looked up, an eagle in the sky, with plumes of gold, with wings wide open, and prepared to stoop”
. . . . .
Dante falls asleep and dreams of a golden eagle sweeping him into the sky. Waking, he finds that it’s morning, and that he and Virgil have been carried to the portal of Purgatory proper. A lady named Lucia carried Dante, On each of the three nights Dante spends in Purgatory, he has a dream. This first dream symbolizes God’s grace in carrying a person toward himself. Lucia refers to St. Lucy, who, in Dante’s Inferno, helped alert Beatrice to Dante’s sinfulness. Before letting Dante in, the angel writes seven “P”s on Dante’s brow with his sword-point. He tells Dante to wash off these scars as he travels through Purgatory.