And Worcester’s laureat wreath. Yet much remains
To conquer still; peace hath her victories
No less renown’d than war: new foes arise
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains;
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.”
To conquer still; peace hath her victories
No less renown’d than war: new foes arise
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains;
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.”
The most spirited and impassioned of them all, and the most inspired with a sort of prophetic fury, is the one entitled, On the late Massacre in Piedmont.
“Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter’d saints, whose bones
Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp’d stocks and stones,
Forgot 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 Heav’n. Their martyr’d 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 learn’d thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.”
Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipp’d stocks and stones,
Forgot 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 Heav’n. Their martyr’d 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 learn’d thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.”
In the Nineteenth Sonnet, which is also On his blindness, we see the jealous watchfulness of his mind over the use of his high gifts, and the beautiful manner in which he satisfies himself that virtuous thoughts and intentions are not the least acceptable offering to the Almighty.
