Page 725 - Shakespeare - Vol. 2

kittened, though yourself had never been born. [20]

GLENDOWER
I say the earth did shake when I was born.

HOTSPUR
And I say the earth was not of my mind,
If you suppose as fearing you it shook.

GLENDOWER
The heavens were all on fire, the earth did tremble.

HOTSPUR
O, then the earth shook to see the heavens on fire, [25]

And not in fear of your nativity.
Diseasèd nature oftentimes breaks forth
In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth
Is with a kind of colic pinched and vexed

By the imprisoning of unruly wind [30]
Within her womb, which, for enlargement striving,
Shakes the old beldame earth and topples down
Steeples and mossgrown towers. At your birth

Our grandam earth, having this distemp’rature,
In passion shook.

GLENDOWER
Cousin, of many men [35]
I do not bear these crossings. Give me leave

To tell you once again that at my birth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields. [40]
These signs have marked me extraordinary,

And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.
Where is he living, clipped in with the sea

That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales, [45]