William Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra

ACT II. 7. SCENE VII. On board POMPEY'S Galley, lying near Misenum.

[Music. Enter two or three SERVANTS with a banquet.]

FIRST SERVANT.
Here they'll be, man. Some o' their plants are ill-rooted
already; the least wind i' the world will blow them down.

SECOND SERVANT.
Lepidus is high-coloured.

FIRST SERVANT.
They have made him drink alms-drink.

SECOND SERVANT.
As they pinch one another by the disposition, he cries out 'no
more'; reconciles them to his entreaty and himself to the drink.

FIRST SERVANT.
But it raises the greater war between him and his discretion.

SECOND SERVANT.
Why, this it is to have a name in great men's fellowship: I had
as lief have a reed that will do me no service as a partizan I
could not heave.

FIRST SERVANT.
To be called into a huge sphere, and not to be seen to move in't,
are the holes where eyes should be, which pitifully disaster the
cheeks.

[A sennet sounded. Enter CAESAR, ANTONY, LEPIDUS, POMPEY,
AGRIPPA, MAECENAS, ENOBARBUS, MENAS, with other Captains.]

ANTONY.
[To CAESAR.] Thus do they, sir: they take the flow o' the Nile
By certain scales i' the pyramid; they know
By the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth
Or foison follow: the higher Nilus swells
The more it promises; as it ebbs, the seedsman
Upon the slime and ooze scatters his grain,
And shortly comes to harvest.

LEPIDUS.
You've strange serpents there.

ANTONY.
Ay, Lepidus.

LEPIDUS.
Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by the operation of
your sun: so is your crocodile.

ANTONY.
They are so.

POMPEY.
Sit --and some wine!--A health to Lepidus!