Milton on the Vaudois

foucachon — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:35:43 +0000

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
E’en 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 roll’d
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
An hundred-fold, who, having learnt thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe!

John Milton, in The Waldenses: Sketches of the Evangelical Christians of the Valleys of the Piedmont, Alexis Muston

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Milton on the Vaudois