my limping metaphor translate

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 Thou art. Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme Worshiping with frail 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 unskillfully, 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 thy great Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate. -C.S. Lewis