Page:Poems Sigourney, 1834.pdf/189

188 Speak of the God who "warneth every where Men to repent," and of that fearful day When he shall judge the world. Loud tumult wakes, The tide of strong emotion hoarsely swells, And that blest voice is silent. They have mocked At heaven's high messenger, and he departs From the wild circle. But his graceful hand Points to an altar, with its mystic scroll— "The unknown God."—Oh Athens! is it so? Thou who hast crowned thyself with woven rays As a divinity, and called the world Thy pilgrim-worshipper, dost thou confess Such ignorance and shame? The unknown God. Why all thy hillocks and resounding streams Do boast their diety, and every house, Yea, every beating heart within thy walls May choose its temple and its priestly train, Victim and garland, and appointed rite; Thou makest the gods of every realm thine own, Fostering with maddened hospitality All forms of idol worship. Can it be That still thou foundst not Him who is so near To every one of us, in "whom we live, And move, and have a being?" Found not Him Of whom thy poets spake with childlike awe ? And thou, Philosophy, whose art refined Did aim to pierce the labyrinth of Fate, And compass with a finespun sophist web This mighty universe—didst thou fall short Of the Upholding Cause? The Unknown God. Thou, who didst smile to find the admiring world Crouch as a pupil to thee, wert thou blind? Blinder than he, who in his humble cot, With hardened hand, his daily labour done, Turneth the page of Jesus, and doth read, With toil, perchance, that the trim schoolboy scorns,