Page 2437 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

feast, which worthily deserved noting.

MÆCENAS
She’s a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her. [185]

ENOBARBUS
When she first met Mark Antony, she purs’d up his heart upon the river of
Cydnus.

AGRIPPA
There she appear’d indeed; or my reporter devis’d well for her.

ENOBARBUS
I will tell you. [190]

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 [195]
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 [200]
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her,
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,

With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.

AGRIPPA
O, rare for Antony! [205]

ENOBARBUS
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

So many mermaids, tended her i’ the eyes,
And made their bends adornings. At the helm