Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 20
XX.
The day had come when the great battle was to take place on the plain before the city; both hostile hosts were marshalled. On the heights in the North stood the blackcoats and the star-decorated, down below these the smock-frocks, in countless numbers, that vanished from the gaze as they melted into one against the horizon. The signal for the attack had already sounded in the camps of the smock-frocks as I strolled through the city gates. The road ran right through the hosts, and there was no other road for me to take save this one. I had hardly advanced a hundred paces when I heard a rumbling as if a storm was coming. It was the men in blouses who cried—
"There is a blackcoat; seize him!"
And again before the echo had died away I heard a rumbling, but this time it was like unto the chord of an organ in church. This time it was the blackcoats, the star-decked, who cried.
"There is a smock-frock; seize him!"
Thereupon I lifted my hand to order silence, and I said, "I am not a blackcoat, for I hate the gloom and love the noonday sun. I am not a smock-frock, for my pride is gladsome, and my defiance sportive; and I would rather be a butterfly than an ant.
"Never will I fight on your side, you smock-frocks, for were you to gain the victory everything I hold dear would be laid in pasture under the kine's feet.
"Neither will I follow your lead, blackcoats, for you are all tarred with the same brush. Why do you quarrel? Go rather into the church that is tolling for matins in the town, and open the place in your psalm-books and sing in harmony the old verses. How vast be their advantages, how great their pleasures prove, who live like brethren and consent in offices of love."
With that I continued my journey and went out into the wilderness. When I had gone some way I heard the first shot. Then I was elated in soul, for I told myself that now the great Beelzebub whimpers.