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Rh In my youth I was vainer, as though only I had a message, And the error men saw would be vanquished the moment they saw it. I was young and so happy, my child, that I revelled in sadness, And men said of this painter, " He gives us the blackness of darkness." But the shadows came on me; your mother, your grandmother, faded, And the angel shone through her more brightly, and burnt to my soul. And I painted her, feature by feature, my love, in her dying ! And I thought, Was I human or demon, to study her so ? And she died as the picture was finished ; my darling, my darling ! But from out of the distance came murmurings, mellowed by time :