Translate our prayers

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow

When I attempt the ineffable name, murmuring “Thou”

And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart

Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing though art.

Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme,

Worshipping with false images a folk-lore dream,

And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address

The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless

Thou in magnetic mercy to thyself divert

Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;

And all men are idolaters, crying unheard

To a deaf idol, if thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in the great

Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

C.S. Lewis (1893-1963).