In the living-room a man on a sofa is laying    Two strangers at the door and one is knocking    The man stands and opens the great wooden door    The one who knows the host tells the other visitor          An old man with top hat and a dark walking stick    Gets through the wooden door and says without a trick    “I want to buy the portrait of this old heroine”    “I’ll never sell this one not even to a king”          “since he finished his last work    Percy’s gone wild and casts strange lurks    Like a mad man who went too far    His oil is the cause let’s take it afar”          “come back tomorrow” says the painter’s friend    “Sir, maybe tomorrow in a sale it’ll end    tonight, we’ll try to make his mind change    and off with the oil, Sir, thou might get a chance”          “since he finished his last work    Percy’s gone wild and casts strange lurks    Like a mad man who went too far    His oil is the cause let’s take it afar”          All eve long young ones tried to convince him    To let the old man by this sale enrich him    The talks are loud and words are high    “Nothing to do but leave him tonight”          All alone the painter stares at his work    There’s a woman face with dark and long hair    Percy takes a book and reads it aloud    “beautiful & perverse, Genuine a slave was made    Priestess of mysteries bought by a strange old man”    He falls asleep and the portrait comes alive    And dressed with black ribbons lays by his side