| ACT IV SCENE I | Without the walls of Athens. | |
| [Enter TIMON] |
| TIMON | Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall, |
| That girdlest in those wolves, dive in the earth, |
| And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent! |
| Obedience fail in children! slaves and fools, |
| Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench, | 5 |
| And minister in their steads! to general filths |
| 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! | 10 |
| 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 lined crutch from thy old limping sire, |
| With it beat out his brains! Piety, and fear, | 15 |
| Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth, |
| Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood, |
| Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades, |
| Degrees, observances, customs, and laws, |
| Decline to your confounding contraries, | 20 |
| And let confusion live! Plagues, incident to men, |
| Your potent and infectious fevers heap |
| On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica, |
| Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt |
| As lamely as their manners. Lust and liberty | 25 |
| Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth, |
| 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, | 30 |
| at their society, as their friendship, may |
| merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee, |
| But nakedness, thou detestable town! |
| Take thou that too, with multiplying bans! |
| Timon will to the woods; where he shall find | 35 |
| The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind. |
| The gods confound--hear me, you good gods all-- |
| The Athenians both within and out that wall! |
| And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow |
| To the whole race of mankind, high and low! Amen. | 40 |
| [Exit] |
Sources for Timon of Athens