Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

III. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont

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 Piedmontese, that rolled

Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To heaven. Their martyr’s 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 learnt thy way,

Early may fly the Babylonian woe.