O women, kneeling by your altar rails long hence,
When songs I wove for my beloved hide the prayer,
And smoke from this dead heart drifts through the violet air
And covers away the smoke of myrrh and frankincense;
Bend down and pray for all that sin I wove in song,
Till the Attorney for Lost Souls cry her sweet cry,
And call to my beloved and me: “No longer fly
Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential throng.”
Public-domain source text
A Lover Speaks to the Hearers of His Songs in Coming Days
by W. B. Yeats
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