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Home  »  Parnassus  »  John Milton (1608–1674)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

Sonnet on the Late Massacre in Piemont

John Milton (1608–1674)

AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

Even them who kept thy 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 Piemontese that rolled

Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow

O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant; that from these may grow

A hundred-fold, who, having learned thy way,

Early may fly the Babylonian woe.