To The Infant Martyrs

By MARK AMOROSE

(Matt. 2:16-18)

Pour out your smiling souls into the sky:

Your tongues will learn to speak as spirits fly.

Seek not maternal milk from earthly clay:

Your sustenance will be the Milky Way.

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Latin original from Complete Poetry of Richard Crashaw, ed. Geo. Walton Williams. (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 289:

Fundite ridentes animas; effundite coelo:

Discet ibi vestra (o quam bene!) lingua loqui.

Nec vos lac vestrum et maternos quaerite fontes:

Que vos expectat lactea tota via est.