The Holy Innocents: Flores Martyrum

"Stretched on the rack like fruit tied to espaliers
The other martyrs, twenty centuries of martyrs
Centuries and centuries of martyrs
Are literally fruits in season,
In every season spread on espaliers
And chiefly fruits of autumn
And my Son even was gathered
In his thirty-third season.
But they, those simple innocents
They are even before the fruit,
They are the promise of fruit.
Salvete flores Martyrum;
Those children of less than two years old are the flowers of the other Martyrs.
That is, the flowers which produce the other martyrs........"

Charles Peguy: The Mystery of the Holy Innocents (trans. by Pansy Pakenham)