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 Which had sometimes almost a cringing in it, Found a few flaws in my tight mail of hate And slowly pricked a poison into me In which at first I failed at recognizing An unfamiliar subtle sort of pity. But so it was, and I believe he knew it; Though even to dream it would have been absurd— Until I knew it, and there was no need Of dreaming. For the fellow's indolence, And his malignant oily swarthiness Housing a reptile blood that I could see Beneath it, like hereditary venom Out of old human swamps, hardly revealed Itself the proper spawning-ground of pity. But so it was. Pity, or something like it, Was in the poison of his proximity;