II

Then I thought, musing, of the innumerous

Sweet songs which for this Italy outrang

From older singers' lips, who sang not thus

Exultingly and purely, yet, with pang

Sheathed into music, touched the heart of us

So finely that the pity scarcely pained!

I thought how Filicaja led on others,

Bewailers for their Italy enchained.

And how they called her childless among mother

Widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrained

Cursing her beauty to her face, as brothers

Might a shamed sister,—"Had she been less

She were less wretched,"—how, evoking so

From congregated wrong and heaped despair

Of men and women writhing under blow,

Harrowed and hideous in their filthy lair,

A personating Image, wherein woe

Was wrapt in beauty from offending much,

They called it Cybele, or Niobe,

Or laid it corpse-like on a bier for such,

Where the whole world might drop for Italy

Those cadenced tears which burn not where they touch,—

"Juliet of nations, canst thou die as we?

And was the violet crown that crowned thy head

So over large, though new buds made it rough,

It slipped down and across thine eyelids dead,

O sweet, fair Juliet?"—Of such songs enough;

Too many of such complaints! Behold, instead,

Void at Verona, Juliet's marble trough!

And void as that is, are all images

Men set between themselves and actual wrong,

To catch the weight of pity, meet the stress

Of conscience; though 'tis easier to gaze long

On personations, masks, and effigies,

Than to see live weak creatures crushed by strong.