Sonnet 18 (15)

1655

Text:

John Milton, Complete Poems and Major Prose

ed. Merritt Y. Hughes, New York: The Odyssey Press 1957

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Sonnet XVIII

On the late Massacre in Piemont

AVENGE, O Lord thy slaughter'd Saints, whose bones

Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,

Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old

When all our Fathers worship't Stocks and Stones,

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Forget not: in thy book record their groanes

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

The Vales redoubl'd to the Hills, and they

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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 thy way

Early may fly the Babylonian woe.