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 hovering1, piteous, penitential throng2.