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![1]
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.
- ↑ They show at Verona an empty trough of stone as the tomb of Juliet
