Letter from W. E. Henley, place not specified, to Anna Boyle, 1876-1877? : fragment of an autograph manuscript signed with initials.

Describing the weather, what he sees and hears from his window, and the songs he is working on; saying "I will try & send a song next Sunday; I have one or two or rather three or four, in various stages of completeness. But the Song Book stands still. I ought not to write love songs, & I can write nothing else; I am lost in a dream & can only work inside it. The Rose & Nightingale is an example : it belongs to a set of lyrics which I have called 'Nineteenth Century [illegible]' in which I intended to set forth the reckless despair, the wild sorrow of an age that believes & hopes nothing, that finds no pleasure in the thought that there can be an Hereafter & no consolation for the fact that there is not save in a frenzy of sensuous enjoyment. And what did I produce? - A lyric full of my own dream, of the dream that reconciles me with life & death, saddened over with - but you know, for you read it."