The Life Of Timon Of Athens

1 Enter Timon.
2 TIMON.
3 Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall
4 That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth
5 And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent!
6 Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools,
7 Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench
8 And minister in their steads! To general filths
9 Convert, o’ th’ instant, green virginity,
10 Do’t in your parents’ eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast;
11 Rather than render back, out with your knives
12 And cut your trusters’ throats! Bound servants, steal!
13 Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,
14 And pill by law. Maid, to thy master’s bed,
15 Thy mistress is o’ th’ brothel. Son of sixteen,
16 Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire,
17 With it beat out his brains! Piety and fear,
18 Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
19 Domestic awe, night-rest and neighbourhood,
20 Instruction, manners, mysteries and trades,
21 Degrees, observances, customs and laws,
22 Decline to your confounding contraries,
23 And let confusion live! Plagues incident to men,
24 Your potent and infectious fevers heap
25 On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica,
26 Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt
27 As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty,
28 Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,
29 That ’gainst the stream of virtue they may strive
30 And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains,
31 Sow all th’ Athenian bosoms, and their crop
32 Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath,
33 That their society, as their friendship, may
34 Be merely poison! Nothing I’ll bear from thee
35 But nakedness, thou detestable town!
36 Take thou that too, with multiplying bans!
37 Timon will to the woods, where he shall find
38 Th’ unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.
39 The gods confound—hear me, you good gods all!—
40 Th’ Athenians both within and out that wall,
41 And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow
42 To the whole race of mankind, high and low!
43 Amen.
44 [_Exit._]