“On the Late Late Massacre in Piedmont”
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Ev’n them who kept the truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heav’n. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O’er all th’ Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple Tyrant that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
John Milton, one of the greatest (if not the greatest) poet of England died 11/6/1674 in London. He is best known for Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671) but this is a good sonnet of his. Milton was a philosopher, hynmist, poet, and theologian.
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