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MAN AND CRAFTSMAN
TO MARNA.
TRUST not my words, for I can sing as sweet To any woman as I sing to you. Oh, pick me out a trull, a fright, a shrew, That I may praise her as an artist's feat And show how much my mastery is complete By making the impossible ring true! Yet I will not do this, which I might do, Nor lay no lying song at alien feet. — But you, if you would know me true indeed, Trust not my songs, albeit they do not lie; Try me by nothing but my naked soul, Try me by nothing but that deathless deed — For if I stood by you in act to die, I could not speak myself more clean and whole. August, 1898.