Story Behind The Song

Originally from Antony & Cleopatra, these lyrics were adapted from Enobarbas? soliloquy in praise of Egypt?s incomparable Queen.

Song Description

Contemporary settings of Shakespearean text.

Lyrics

Cleopatra

O Rare Egyptian!
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water:
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: she did lie In her pavilion ?
On each side her stood pretty dimpled boys,
Like smiling Cupids,

A seeming mermaid steers:
The silken tackle swell with the touches
Of those flower-soft hands,
From the barge, a strange invisible perfume?
O Rare Egyptian!

Age cannot wither her,
Nor custom stale her infinite variety:
She makes hungry where most she satisfies