_Ask me not how they came_,
_These songs of love and death_,
_These dreams of a futile stage_,
_These thumb-nails seen in the street_:
_Ask me not how nor why_,
_But take them for your own_,
_Dear Wife of twenty years_,
_Knowing_--_O_, _who so well_?--
_You it was made the man_
_That made these songs of love_,
_Death_, _and the trivial rest_:
_So that_, _your love elsewhere_,
_These songs_, _or bad or good_--
_How should they ever have been_?
WORTHING, _July_ 31, 1901.