In “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” Religious imagery, purity, and innocence is often juxtaposed with violent atrocities. The literal event it is referencing is a massacre on Easter day, so it is about bloodshed on the holiest of Christian holy days. The line one alliteration of “thy slaughtered saints” places these two opposites right next to each other as is done many more times in the poem. That opening line establishes the idea early on that bad things happen to good people. Here the specific topic of the Piedmont Easter Massacre is a culturally relevant example of this since the Catholic majority massacred the innocent Waldensians because of religious persecution. One strong poetic device that jumped out at me from the poem was the enjambments in  lines 7 and 8. It reads “Slain by the bloody piedmontese that rolled // mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans //.” Through these enjambments, line 8 is made to begin with “mother and infant” and end with “their moans,” which is another terrifying image of linking what is pure with atrocious violence. The concluding line compares the government in power in Piedmont, and the pope who is referred to as “the triple tyrant” to the city of Babylon which fell due to its evil ways and which is believed by protestants to be an allegory of the same fate that the Roman Catholic church will meet due to the evil deeds of the “triple tyrant.” The poem is in the voice of praying to god to smite these evil people who would slaughter these innocent people in Piedmont. So this individual is calling on God to bring the fate of Babylon to the catholic church.