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Before the Walls of Athens. | |
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Trumpets sound. Enter ALCIBIADES with his Powers. | |
| Alcib. Sound to this coward and lascivious town | |
| Our terrible approach. [A parley sounded. | |
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Enter Senators, on the Walls. | 5 |
| Till now you have gone on, and fill’d the time | |
| With all licentious measure, making your wills | |
| The scope of justice; till now myself and such | |
| As slept within the shadow of your power | |
| Have wander’d with our travers’d arms, and breath’d | 10 |
| Our sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush, | |
| When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong, | |
| Cries of itself, ‘No more:’ now breathless wrong | |
| Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease, | |
| And pursy insolence shall break his wind | 15 |
| With fear and horrid flight. | |
| First Sen. Noble and young, | |
| When thy first griefs were but a mere conceit, | |
| Ere thou hadst power or we had cause of fear, | |
| We sent to thee, to give thy rages balm, | 20 |
| To wipe out our ingratitude with loves | |
| Above their quantity. | |
| Sec. Sen. So did we woo | |
| Transformed Timon to our city’s love | |
| By humble message and by promis’d means: | 25 |
| We were not all unkind, nor all deserve | |
| The common stroke of war. | |
| First Sen. These walls of ours | |
| Were not erected by their hands from whom | |
| You have receiv’d your grief; nor are they such | 30 |
| That these great towers, trophies, and schools should fall | |
| For private faults in them. | |
| Sec. Sen. Nor are they living | |
| Who were the motives that you first went out; | |
| Shame that they wanted cunning in excess | 35 |
| Hath broke their hearts. March, noble lord, | |
| Into our city with thy banners spread: | |
| By decimation, and a tithed death,— | |
| If thy revenges hunger for that food | |
| Which nature loathes,—take thou the destin’d tenth, | 40 |
| And by the hazard of the spotted die | |
| Let die the spotted. | |
| First Sen. All have not offended; | |
| For those that were, it is not square to take | |
| On those that are, revenges: crimes, like lands, | 45 |
| Are not inherited. Then, dear countryman, | |
| Bring in thy ranks, but leave without thy rage: | |
| Spare thy Athenian cradle, and those kin | |
| Which in the bluster of thy wrath must fall | |
| With those that have offended: like a shepherd, | 50 |
| Approach the fold and cull th’ infected forth, | |
| But kill not all together. | |
| Sec. Sen. What thou wilt, | |
| Thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile | |
| Than hew to ’t with thy sword. | 55 |
| First Sen. Set but thy foot | |
| Against our rampir’d gates, and they shall ope, | |
| So thou wilt send thy gentle heart before, | |
| To say thou’lt enter friendly. | |
| Sec. Sen. Throw thy glove, | 60 |
| Or any token of thine honour else, | |
| That thou wilt use the wars as thy redress | |
| And not as our confusion, all thy powers | |
| Shall make their harbour in our town, till we | |
| Have seal’d thy full desire. | 65 |
| Alcib. Then there’s my glove; | |
| Descend, and open your uncharged ports: | |
| Those enemies of Timon’s and mine own | |
| Whom you yourselves shall set out for reproof, | |
| Fall, and no more; and, to atone your fears | 70 |
| With my more noble meaning, not a man | |
| Shall pass his quarter, or offend the stream | |
| Of regular justice in your city’s bounds, | |
| But shall be render’d to your public laws | |
| At heaviest answer. | 75 |
| Both. ’Tis most nobly spoken. | |
| Alcib. Descend, and keep your words. [The Senators descend, and open the gates. | |
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Enter a Soldier. | |
| Sold. My noble general, Timon is dead; | |
| Entomb’d upon the very hem o’ the sea: | 80 |
| And on his grave-stone this insculpture, which | |
| With wax I brought away, whose soft impression | |
| Interprets for my poor ignorance. | |
| Alcib. Here lies a wretched corse, of wretched soul bereft: | |
| Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left! | 85 |
| Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate: | |
| Pass by, and curse thy fill; but pass and stay not here thy gait. | |
| These well express in thee thy latter spirits: | |
| Though thou abhorr’dst in us our human griefs, | |
| Scorn’dst our brain’s flow and those our droplets which | 90 |
| From niggard nature fall, yet rich conceit | |
| Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye | |
| On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead | |
| Is noble Timon; of whose memory | |
| Hereafter more. Bring me into your city, | 95 |
| And I will use the olive with my sword; | |
| Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make each | |
| Prescribe to other as each other’s leech. | |
| Let our drums strike. [Exeunt. | |
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