The Lover Speaks To The Hearers Of His Songs In Coming Days

Portrait of William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats 1865–1939

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.'

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