The Poetry Corner

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

By William Butler Yeats

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.