quote · Source-linked selection
The barge she sat in, like a burnished 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. She did lie In her pavilion: on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-coloured fans.... Her gentlewomen, like the Nereïdes, So many mermaids tended her. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands.
The barge she sat in, like a burnished 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. She did lie In her pavilion: on each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-coloured fans.... Her gentlewomen, like the Nereïdes, So many mermaids tended her. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands.
Approximate author period: c. 1590 AD · renaissance
Meaning not yet available
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Begin with source-checked readings and explanations ↗Attribution & collection notes
- Author or tradition
- William Shakespeare
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1590 AD · renaissance
author lifetime midpoint (1564–1616)
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken. - Recorded source
- My Commonplace Book (third English edition,1921) (1921 AD)
Page 336 · printed citation: Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra). · compiler notes excluded
A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.
The voice behind the words.
Listed in the author section of Bartlett’s ninth-edition anthology, in the linked 1905 printing. Dates reflect that historical edition and may differ from modern scholarship.
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