THE LIFE OF TIMON OF ATHENS
Page: 40

That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? will these moss'd trees,
That have outliv'd the eagle, page thy heels
And skip when thou point'st out? will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste
To cure thy o'ernight's surfeit? Call the creatures
Whose naked natures live in all the spite
Of wreakful heaven, whose bare unhoused trunks,
To the conflicting elements expos'd,
Answer mere nature; bid them flatter thee;
O! thou shalt find--

TIMON.
A fool of thee. Depart.

APEMANTUS.
I love thee better now than e'er I did.

TIMON.
I hate thee worse.

APEMANTUS.
Why?

TIMON.
Thou flatter'st misery.

APEMANTUS.
I flatter not, but say thou art a caitiff.

TIMON.
Why dost thou seek me out?

APEMANTUS.
To vex thee.

TIMON.
Always a villain's office or a fool's.
Dost please thyself in't?

APEMANTUS.
Ay.

TIMON.
What! a knave too?

APEMANTUS.
If thou didst put this sour-cold habit on
To castigate thy pride, 'twere well; but thou
Dost it enforcedly; thou'dst courtier be again
Wert thou not beggar. Willing misery
Outlives incertain pomp, is crown'd before;
The one is filling still, never complete;
The other, at high wish: best state, contentless,
Hath a distracted and most wretched being,
Worse than the worst, content.
Thou shouldst desire to die, being miserable.

TIMON.
Not by his breath that is more miserable.
Thou art a slave, whom Fortune's tender arm
With favour never clasp'd, but bred a dog.
Hadst thou, like us from our first swath, proceeded
The sweet degrees that this brief world affords
To such as may the passive drugs of it
Freely command, thou wouldst have plung'd thyself
In general riot; melted down thy youth
In different beds of lust; and never learn'd
The icy precepts of respect, but follow'd
The sugar'd game before thee. But myself,
Who had the world as my confectionary,
The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men
At duty, more than I could frame employment,
That numberless upon me stuck as leaves
Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush
Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare