Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 19
XIX.
One forenoon, when out upon the ocean which stretches its boundless surface between the old and the new world, I saw from the deck of my yacht a black speck away on the otherwise bare and void horizon. At first I thought that the object was a ship, but in measure as it approached it proved to be an animal of unknown appearance, but resembling an ox, that was bobbing like an eider duck on the water. It bellowed at me when still at a great distance.
"Who are you, vermin?"
"Vermin yourself," I replied. "I am Young Ofeg,—but who are you?" I added, as the monster came abreast of my craft.
"I am the great Bos Humanitatis, round whom the peoples dance. On your knees!"
"But it is by no means a way of mine to adore strange gods. Bare the marrow of your being and the reins of your soul, so that I may see of what stuff you are made."
With that a parchment scroll, such as one sees in the paintings of the Middle Ages, curled out of the beast's mouth, and the following words were inscribed on it: "The good of All is the Highest Weal," and the colossus bellowed—"This is the great truth, the only truth that was for ever found in the world or ever will be found. On your knees! This truth is adored by all people, and all tongues chant its praises. Everything must fall on its face in the dust before it. On your knees! All things shall be reduced to the same level, the level of mediocrity. What is under shall be lifted up, what is over shall be dragged down. On your knees! I say."
"I don't believe you. I believe in the one. I believe in myself. The God to whom I could bring myself to kneel dwells in my own soul, where I have prepared him a chamber. I treat him with my best wine. I deck his dwelling with the rarest plants, and it is the joy of my life to see him hourly wax in strength. Some day, when he is full-fledged, he will soar out into the azure spheres high above the swamps in which your reptiles wallow. It is he whom you would slay. For in the same moment that I would bend my knee to adore you, you monster, my proud God would give up the ghost."
The monster snorted at that, so that the water rose in waves and frothed with stinking spume.
"On your knees! or I will trample you and your offspring into pulp under my claws, make you each and all into the most wretched stuff in existence."
"But suppose I were the stronger," laughed I.
"You vermin!"
"Don't you know how the tiny parasite manages with the butterfly larvae? I will stick in your skin like a gadfly, and you shall plunge across the ocean in helpless fury under my stings, like your brother in the great feeding grounds. Will you try it on?"
The monster got under way, and the water waltzed about him, rising like a cloud of foam; and my bark glided softly ahead over the ocean that basked quietly in the noonday sun, and the new shore loomed ahead of her bow.