(Latin fusion: lepus/leporis — rabbit/hare, + cygnus — swan.) The hare has carried an old, uneasy symbolism in religious art — sometimes a figure of vigilance, hidden at the base of paintings watching for danger it can't outrun, sometimes a figure of fertility and multiplication, and always a prey animal, built more for flight than for defense. The swan carries the opposite theological weight almost entirely: purity rendered in white, the soul's ascent, the bird most associated with grace descending or grace departing.