The Vision of the Archangels
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LowWLy up silent peaks, the white edge of the world,Trod four archangels, clear against the unheed-ing sky,Bearing, with quiet even steps, and great wingsfurled,A little dingy coffin; where a child must lie,It was so tiny. (Yet, you had fancied, God couldneverHave bidden a child turn from the spring and thesunlight,And shut him in that lonely shell, to drop for everInto the emptiness “and silence, into thepaehts 7 2) They then from the sheer summit cast, and watchedit fall,Through unknown glooms, that frail black coffin—and thereinGod’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 againWith sorrowful quiet faces downward to the plain. 31
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