JULIUS CAESAR. William Shakespeare

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      SCENE III. The same. A street.

       [Thunder and lightning. Enter, from opposite sides, CASCA, with his sword drawn, and CICERO.]

       CICERO.

       Good even, Casca: brought you Caesar home?

       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

       Th’ ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,

       To be exalted with the threatening clouds:

       But never till tonight, 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.

       CICERO.

       Why, saw you anything more wonderful?

       CASCA.

       A common slave—you’d 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.

       Besides,—I ha’ not since put up my sword,—

       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 noonday upon the marketplace,

       Howling 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.

       Comes Caesar to the Capitol tomorrow?

       CASCA.

       He doth, for he did bid Antonius

       Send word to you he would be there tomorrow.

       CICERO.

       Good then, Casca: this disturbed sky

       Is not to walk in.

       CASCA.

       Farewell, Cicero.

       [Exit Cicero.]

       [Enter Cassius.]

       CASSIUS.

       Who’s there?

       CASCA.

       A Roman.

       CASSIUS.

       Casca, by your voice.

       CASCA.

       Your ear is good. Cassius, what night is this!

       CASSIUS.

       A very pleasing night to honest men.

       CASCA.

       Who ever knew the heavens menace so?

       CASSIUS.

       Those that have known the earth so full of faults.

       For my part, I have walk’d about the streets,

       Submitting me unto the perilous night;

       And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,

       Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;

       And when the cross blue lightning seem’d to open

       The breast of heaven, I did present myself

       Even in the aim and very flash of it.

       CASCA.

       But wherefore did you so much tempt the Heavens?

       It is the part of men to fear and tremble,

       When the most mighty gods by tokens send

       Such dreadful heralds to astonish us.

       CASSIUS.

       You are dull, Casca;and those sparks of life

       That should be in a Roman you do want,

       Or else you use not. You look pale and gaze,

       And put on fear and cast yourself in wonder,

       To see the strange impatience of the Heavens:

       But if you would consider the true cause

       Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,

       Why birds and beasts,from quality and kind;

       Why old men, fools, and children calculate;—

       Why all these things change from their ordinance,

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