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TO TH' APRIL DAY AGAIN.
One of his most dreadful imprecations is that which occurs
immediately on his leaving Athens.
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,
And minister in their steads. To general filths
Convert o' th' 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:
Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,
And pill by law. Maid, to thy master's bed:
Thy mistress is o' th' brothel. Son of sixteen,
Pluck the lin'd crutch from thy old limping sire,
And with it beat his brains out! Fear and piety,
Religion to the Gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instructions, manners, mysteries and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries;
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
Creep in the minds and manners of our youth,
That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive,
And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains,
Sow all th' Athenian bosoms; and their crop
Be general leprosy: breath infect breath,
That their society (as their friendship) may
Be merely poison!
Timon is here just as ideal in his passion for ill as he had before
been in his belief of good. Apemantus was satisfied with the
mischief existing in the world, and with his own ill-nature. One of
the most decisive intimations of Timon's morbid jealousy of
appearances is in his answer to Apemantus, who asks him:
What things in the world can'st thou nearest compare
with thy flatterers?
Timon. Women nearest: but men, men are the things themselves.
Apemantus, it is said, 'loved few things better than to abhor
himself'. This is not the case with Timon, who neither loves to
abhor himself nor others. All his vehement misanthropy is forced,
up-hill work. From the slippery turns of fortune, from the turmoils
of passion and adversity, he wishes to sink into the quiet of the
grave. On that subject his thoughts are intent, on that he finds
time and place to grow romantic. He digs his own grave by the sea-
shore; contrives his funeral ceremonies amidst the pomp of
desolation, and builds his mausoleum of the elements.
Come not to me again; but say to Athens,
Timon hath made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Which once a-day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover.--Thither come,
And let my grave-stone be your oracle.
And again, Alcibiades, after reading his epitaph, says of him:
These well express in thee thy latter spirits:
Though thou abhorred'st in us our human griefs,
Scorn'd'st our brain's flow, and those our droplets, which
From niggard nature fall; yet rich conceit
Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye
On thy low grave--
thus making the winds his funeral dirge, his mourner the murmuring
ocean; and seeking in the everlasting solemnities of nature oblivion
of the transitory splendour of his lifetime.
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