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 flower petal-
Till it was
no more visible; then turned again
With sorrowful quiet faces downward to
the plain.
- Rupert Brooke