Hanrahan Speaks To The Lovers Of His Songs In Coming Days

by William Butler Yeats

O, Colleens, 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 the great sin I wove in song,
Till Maurya of the wounded heart cry a sweet cry,
And call to my beloved and me: ‘No longer fly
‘Amid the hovering, piteous, penitential throng.’