From them that in her courts ye saw,
Her perfect doctors of the law,
What is it came ye here to note?--
A young man preaching in a boat
A prophet! Boys and women weak!
Declare, or cease to rave:
Whence is it he hath learned to speak?
Say, who his doctrine gave?
A prophet? Prophet wherefore he
Of all in Israel tribes?--
_He teacheth with authority,
And not as do the Scribes_.
Here is another from one who will not be offended if I class him with
this school--the finest of critics as one of the most finished of
poets--Matthew Arnold. Only my reader must remember that of none of my
poets am I free to choose that which is most characteristic: I have the
scope of my volume to restrain me.
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:
"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 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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