God's wisdom and God's goodness! Ay, but fools
Mis-define these till God knows them no more.
Wisdom and goodness, they are God!—what schools
Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore?
This no saint preaches, and this no Church rules;
'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore.
IMMORTALITY.
Foiled by our fellow-men, depressed, outworn,
We leave the brutal world to take its way,
And, Patience! in another life, we say,
The world shall be thrust down, and we upborne.
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,
