Then I thought, musing, of the innumerous Sweet songs which still for Italy outrang From older singers' lips who sang not thus Exultingly and purely, yet, with pang Fast sheathed in 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 mothers, Widow of empires, ay, and scarce refrained Cursing her beauty to her face, as brothers Might a shamed sister's,--"Had she been less fair She were less wretched;"--how, evoking so From congregated wrong and heaped despair Of men and women writhing under blow, Harrowed and hideous in a filthy lair, Some 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 all the 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:[2] As 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,--since 't is easier to gaze long On mournful masks and sad effigies Than on real, live, weak creatures crushed by strong.