But what avail inadequate words to reach <br />The innermost of Truth? Who shall essay, <br />Blinded and weak, to point and lead the way, <br />Or solve the mystery in familiar speech? <br />Yet, if it be that something not thy own, <br />Some shadow of the Thought to which our schemes, <br />Creeds, cult, and ritual are at best but dreams, <br />Is even to thy unworthiness made known, <br />Thou mayst not hide what yet thou shouldst not dare <br />To utter lightly, lest on lips of thine <br />The real seem false, the beauty undivine. <br />So, weighing duty in the scale of prayer, <br />Give what seems given thee. It may prove a seed <br />Of goodness dropped in fallow-grounds of need.<br /><br />John Greenleaf Whittier<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/utterance-3/
