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Cleopatra, Sailing: Quotations from Shakespearian Quotations

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver; Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water, which they beat, to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggar'd all description: she did lie In her pavilion (cloth of gold of tissue) O'er-picturing that Venus, where we see, The fancy out-work nature; on each side her, Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With diversecolour'd fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool ;- And what they undid, did. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes, And made their bends adornings: at the helm, A seeming mermaid steers; the silken tackle Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands, That yarely frame the office. From the barge, A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs.— A. C. ii. 2