| Rupert Brooke (1887–1915). Collected Poems. 1916. |
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| I. 1905–1908 |
| 7. The Vision of the Archangels |
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| 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 | 5 |
| 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.…) | |
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| They then from the sheer summit cast, and watched it fall, | |
| Through unknown glooms, that frail black coffin—and therein | 10 |
| 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. | |
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