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.’