Lament

Lo here I sit in silent prayer
My distant Aidenn lost
Sucrease of sorrow hovers, nigh,
Beyond a mortal's cost.

Censers glide o'er embers bright
Their eyes from fire wrought.
As seraphs perch on crumbled busts
Of olden time forgot.

My soul, like ancient Carthage, burns
And falls like Babylon.
A prisoner who suffers from
This nameless eidolon.

Present quaff this kind nepenthe
In these most dire hours
And free me from this caged cell
Deep within my bowers.

Within my sepulchre, bedight
In pinions gray and dim,
I lay, resigned to my fate,
And sing this woeful hymn.