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143
MAN AND CRAFTSMAN
To Marna.
Trust not my words, for I can sing as sweetTo 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.
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