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.