day for this sport in the land,
As though the great God had the gout in his hand,
And thus couldn't smite in the midst of your band?
Say, is this a time for your revelling shouts,
For your banquetings, feasts, and holiday bouts?
Quid hic statis otiosi? declare
Why, folding your arms, stand ye lazily there?
While the furies of war on the Danube now fare
And Bavaria's bulwark is lying full low,
And Ratisbon's fast in the clutch of the foe.
Yet, the army lies here in Bohemia still,
And caring for naught, so their paunches they fill!
Bottles far rather than battles you'll get,
And your bills than your broad-swords more readily wet;
With the wenches, I ween, is your dearest concern,
And you'd rather roast oxen than Oxenstiern.
In sackcloth and ashes while Christendom's grieving,
No thought has the soldier his guzzle of leaving.
'Tis a time of misery, groans, and tears!
Portentous the face of the heavens appears!
And forth from the clouds behold blood-red,
The Lord's war-mantle is downward spread--
While the comet is thrust as a threatening rod,
From the window of heaven by the hand of God.
The world is but one vast house of woe,
The ark of the church stems a bloody flow,
The Holy Empire--God help the same!
Has wretchedly sunk to a hollow name.
The Rhine's gay stream has a gory gleam,
The cloister's nests are robbed by roysters;
The church-lands now are changed to lurch-lands;
Abbacies, and all other holy foundations
Now are but robber-sees--rogues' habitations.
And thus is each once-blest German state,
Deep sunk in the gloom of the desolate!
Whence comes all this? Oh, that will I tell--
It comes of your doings, of sin, and of hell;
Of the horrible, heathenish lives ye lead,
Soldiers and officers, all of a breed.
For sin is the magnet, on every hand,
That draws your steel throughout the land!
As the onion causes the tear to flow,
So vice must ever be followed by woe--
The W duly succeeds the V,
This is the order of A, B, C.
Ubi erit victoriae spes,
Si offenditur Deus? which says,
How, pray ye, shall victory e'er come to pass,
If thus you play truant from sermon and mass,
And do nothing but lazily loll o'er the glass?
The woman, we're told in the Testament,
Found the penny in search whereof she went.
Saul met with his father's asses again,
And Joseph his precious fraternal train,
But he, who 'mong soldiers shall hope to see
God's fear, or shame, or discipline--he
From his toil, beyond doubt, will baffled ret