Julius Caesar:  William Shakespeare

CICERO

…Why are you breathless? and why stare you so?

CASCA

Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth

Shakes like a thing unfirm?

O Cicero, I have seen

tempests, when the scolding winds

Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen

The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,

To be exalted with the threatening clouds:

But never till to-night, never till now,

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.

Either there is a civil strife in heaven,

Or else the world, too saucy with the gods,

Incenses them to send destruction.

….A common slave -you know him well by sight-

Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn

Like twenty torches join'd, and yet his hand,

Not sensible of fire, remain'd unscorch'd.

...Against the Capitol I met a lion,

Who glared upon me, and went surly by,

Without annoying me: and there were drawn

Upon a heap a hundred ghastly women,

Transformed with their fear; who swore they saw

Men all in fire walk up and down the streets.

And yesterday the bird of night did sit

Even at noon-day upon the market-place,

Hooting and shrieking. When these prodigies

Do so conjointly meet, let not men say

'These are their reasons; they are natural;'

For, I believe, they are portentous things

Unto the climate that they point upon.

CICERO

Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time:

But men may construe things after their fashion,

Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

…Good night then, Casca:

this disturbed sky is not to walk in.