I am filled with my loathing! Oh keep me a Greek though you make me a whoreson, When the worship of beauty is dead you may pare off my foreskin. When the symbol is dead which I mould to Diana our goddess I’ll retire to the country of Nod, no matter where Nod is. It will live when your temples are built, if any are builded, And Jesus in silver is nailed on a cross which is gilded. And touching this thing is it different to worship a man or abstraction? Or an idol of silver or stone?--go talk to your spirit’s distraction! Areopagus listened to Paul, I am told, for Athens is spending Her time, as of old, in weighing new things and attending. They heard him in silence! Let his arguments pass uncorrected-- Why, Plato had told us of Er from the dead resurrected! 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 Through mystical wonder or fear to the Sphinx or the Minotaur dreaded. There’s Persephone dying and rising, and Cerberus the dog many-headed. We have thought it all through! Yet I say if a virtue Elysian Resides in the doctrine I’ll leave off the goddess Ephesian; Sell my tools, shut my shop, worship God in a way that is safer, Make the Unknown the known! Have they shown you a magical wafer? A PLAY IN FOUR ACTS _Act One_ There was slight rain that afternoon, And tempest in the apple trees; But as the sun went down the moon Sailed swiftly to a western breeze.