Now, mark me! For showing the wisdom, compassion of poets and sages
That silence like lightning will aureole Paul to the end of the ages.
Oh Athens, who set up that shrine, do you think it was just superstition
Which carved for all passers to see that profoundest inscription:
To the unknown God? Do you think it was cowardice even?
Make altars and gods as you will, unknown is the planeted heaven.
And we who are richest in gods—have exhausted all thought in creating
Both symbols and shapes for interpreted loving and hating
Still sense the Unknown, though in blindness, in love as in duty
Would worship it most—the Unknown is the ultimate beauty.
Yes, Athens who set up the altar and chiseled the worshipful letters
To the Unknown God—what ignorance fastened with fetters
Did you loosen, oh wonder of Tarsus, how help their unknowing
Who told them he dwelt not in temples, nor needed the flowing
Of prayers from men’s hearts—the Giver of life and of all things, and seeing
He is lord of the heavens, in whom we are living and having our being.
So quoting our poet who centuries since with the monarch Gonatas
Lived and wrote the Phaenomena, known to the Greeks as Aratus.
And yet Hyacinthus I pity this Paul for profoundest compassion
Of Jesus before him. This sky and this earth I can fashion