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 outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With diverse colour'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. The city cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony
Enthron'd i' the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air, which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
And made a gap in nature."]

IV

THE DEATH OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA[105]

When Mark Antony saw that his men did forsake him, and yielded unto
Caesar,[106] and that his footmen were broken and overthrown: he then
fled into the city, crying out that Cleopatra had betrayed him unto
them, with whom he had made war for her sake. Then she being afraid of
his fury, fled into the tomb which she had caused to be made, and
there locked the doors unto her, and shut all the springs of the locks
with great bolts, and in the meantime sent unto Antony to tell him
that she was dead. Antony believing it, said unto himself: What dost
thou look for further, Antony, sith spiteful fortune had taken from
thee the only joy thou hadst, for whom thou yet reservedst thy life?
when he had said these words, he went into a chamber and unarmed
himself, and being naked said thus: O Cleopatra, it grieveth me not
that I have lost thy company, for I will not be long from thee: but I
am sorry, that having been so great a captain and emperor, I am indeed
condemned to be judged of less courage and noble mind, than a woman.

Now he had a man of his called Eros, whom he loved and trusted much,
and whom he had long before caused to swea