This spring and flow of talk idolatrous, Uncertain how much serious and how much A play of skeptic humor half ashamed, Was a sad note discordant to the tune Of chastened reverent feeling in the breasts Of men and women owning debt indeed For hospitality sincerely meant By Publius they well knew, yet paramount Allegiance owning to a jealous God Who brooked no name divine beside His own. All toward Paul turning waited, and he spoke: "O Publius, guests are we and thou art host; Most gracious we acknowledge thee to be, As most ungracious were we did we not, Or undiscerning. Thou hast honored us Using that frankness to set forth thy ways, Thine, and thy fellow countrymen's; ways yet Far alien from the ways endeared to us. These let me, honoring thee thus with return Of frankness like thine own, declare to thee. "We count that thy so-named divinities Are nothing such as thou supposest them. They are not gods, since God is one, and will His incommunicable majesty Permit none other to partake with Him. Perhaps, when ye idolaters enshrine Reputed images of whom ye call Gods and these worship with your various rites, It is with some endeavor of your thought Beyond the sign to what is signified. But so even is your worship worse than vain. For there is nothing in the world--the world Of things existent, things substantial, real, Spirit or matter--that as counterpart Answers to these conceived resemblances, These idols framed by your artificers, Pretending to be images of gods; Nothing, I mean, that can be called Divine. Behind them there is something real indeed, But evil, not good; no such reality As that ye dream. Demons, not gods are they, Who, hid behind your idols, mask and mock. Therefore we can but hate idolatry, And flee it as one flees a pestilence. "Forgive me, the affront is not to thee, Not to thy fellow worshippers misled, But to the kingdom of the Evil One, That emperor of the powers of the air Who for a season yet has sufferance here To practice his impostures on mankind. Thou therefore, O lord Publius, understand, Thou, and ye others not of Hebrew race, That we, full gladly sharing this fair feast, And out of true hearts thanking him our host, Know nothing of the dedications made Of meats or drinks partaken to those gods No gods; but give our worship and our praise Only to one God over all Most High, The Maker and the Ruler of all worlds, Jehovah named, blesséd forevermore. Add to our debt, O Publius, also this, That I have spoken thus without offence."