It also eliminates the rhyme "known" and "stone"; and, as has been pointed out in another of the threads devoted to a torturing this one poor verse a thousand ways, internal rhyme and assonance is very much a feature of this work, and has a relationship to Irish song in general. I guess that, in the posting above, you're following Luke Kelly's phrasing rather than doing what, two centuries back, Robert Burns recommended doing with melody and verse; become thoroughly familiar with the music before making any attempt to fit words to it. There's no congestion here;

"i GAVE hr GIFTS of th MIND; i GAVE hr th SEE-cret SIGN that's KNOWN
to the AR-tists WHO have KNOWN the TRU-ue gods of SOUND and STONE
and WORD and TINT; i DID not stint &c..."

A recent thread on the Irish baritone H Plunkett Greene and his views on the rhythmic freedom employed by traditional singers might be of interest with regard to fitting these long phrases to the melody in a way that does manage to convey the sense