Saturday, April 25, 2009

O death.

Sonnett XVIII: On The Late Massacre in Piedmont
Avenge , O lord, thy slaughter'd Saints, whose bones
  Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountain cold,
  Ev'n them who kept thy truth, so pure of old
  When all our Fathers worship't 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 roll'd
  Mother with Infant down the Rocks. Their moans
Thy vales redoubl'd to the Hills, and they
  To Heav'n. Their martyr'd 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 the way
  Early may fly the Babylonian woe.
—John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose Merrit Y. Hughes, ed. (The Odyssey Press, 1957), 167–8.

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