Without the Walls of Athens | |
| |
Enter TIMON. | |
| Tim. Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall, | |
| That girdlest in those wolves, dive in the earth. | 4 |
| And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent! | |
| Obedience fail in children! slaves and fools, | |
| Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench, | |
| And minister in their steads! To general filths | 8 |
| Convert, o’ the instant, green virginity! | |
| Do ’t in your parents’ eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast; | |
| Rather than render back, out with your knives, | |
| And cut your trusters’ throats! Bound servants, steal!— | 12 |
| Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,— | |
| And pill by law. Maid, to thy master’s bed; | |
| Thy mistress is o’ the brothel! Son of sixteen, | |
| Pluck the lin’d crutch from thy old limping sire, | 16 |
| With it beat out his brains! Piety, and fear, | |
| Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, | |
| Domestic awe, night-rest and neighbourhood, | |
| Instruction, manners, mysteries and trades, | 20 |
| Degrees, observances, customs and laws, | |
| Decline to your confounding contraries, | |
| And let confusion live! Plagues incident to men, | |
| Your potent and infectious fevers heap | 24 |
| On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica, | |
| Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt | |
| As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty | |
| Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth, | 28 |
| That’ gainst the stream of virtue they may strive, | |
| And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains, | |
| Sow all the Athenian bosoms, and their crop | |
| Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath, | 32 |
| That their society, as their friendship, may | |
| Be merely poison! Nothing I’ll bear from thee | |
| But nakedness, thou detestable town! | |
| Take thou that too, with multiplying bans! | 36 |
| Timon will to the woods; where he shall find | |
| The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind. | |
| The gods confound—hear me, you good gods all— | |
| The Athenians both within and out that wall! | 40 |
| And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow | |
| To the whole race of mankind, high and low! Amen. [Exit. | |
