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You are filled with anguish
For the suffering of others.
And no one's grief
Has ever passed you by.
You are relentless
Only to yourself,
Forever cold and pitiless.
But if only you could look upon
Your own sadness from a distance,
Just once with a loving soulβ
Oh, how you would pity yourself.
How sadly you would weep.
βGrand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna Romanova, poem dedicated to her mother, April 23, 1917
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Candace Fleming (The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia)