And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn
The world’s poor, routed leavings? or will they
Who failed under the heat of this life’s day
Support the fervors of the heavenly morn?
No, no! the energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun;
And he who flagged not in the earthly strife,
From strength to strength advancing,—only he,
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.
THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID.
He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save.
So rang Tertullian’s sentence, on the side
Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried,[10]
“Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave,
Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave.”
So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed,
The infant Church! of love she felt the tide
Stream on her from her Lord’s yet recent grave.
And then she smiled; and in the Catacombs,
With eye suffused but heart inspired true,
On those walls subterranean, where she hid
Her head ’mid ignominy, death, and tombs,
She her Good Shepherd’s hasty image drew—
And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.