How to pass string from EJS Into script tag

Question

I want to store and print a variable (string in this case) sent from ejs by console.log in script tag

but it gives me an "(index):19 Uncaught ReferenceError: Cannot access 'text' before initialization"

code in node js

app.get("/", (req, res)=> {
    res.render("index", {message: "hello world"})
})

code in html

<script>
   const text = <% message %>
   console.log("message is " + text);
</script>