Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume IV. The Higher Life. 1904. | | | | I. The Divine Element—(God, Christ, the Holy Spirit) | | The Good Shepherd with the Kid | | Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) |
| | | 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: | |
| “Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave, | |
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| Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave.”— | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| And then she smiled; and in the Catacombs, | |
| With eye suffused but heart inspired true, | 10 |
| On those walls subterranean, where she hid | |
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| Her head in ignominy, death, and tombs, | |
| She her good Shepherd’s hasty image drew— | |
| And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid. | | | | |
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