7. The Vision of the Archangels

SLOWLY up silent peaks, the white edge of the world,

Trod four archangels, clear against the unheeding sky,

Bearing, with quiet even steps, and great wings furled,

A little dingy coffin; where a child must lie,

It was so tiny. (Yet, you had fancied, God could never

Have bidden a child turn from the spring and the sunlight,

And shut him in that lonely shell, to drop for ever

Into the emptiness and silence, into the night.…)

They then from the sheer summit cast, and watched it fall,

Through unknown glooms, that frail black coffin—and therein

God’s little pitiful Body lying, worn and thin,

And curled up like some crumpled, lonely flowerpetal—

Till it was no more visible; then turned again

With sorrowful quiet faces downward to the plain.