Six Angels circle the text as in protection of the little boy, a foreshadowing of  his safe return.

ss .

Or perhaps not--
compare the anonymous nursery rhyme which Stephen Dedalus repeats to himself in A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man:

Dingdong! The castle bell!
Farewell, my mother!
Bury me in the old churchyard
Besie my eldest brother.
Six angels at my back,
Two to sing and two to pray
And two to carry my soul away.
nh.