MENAS Come, let's away.
[Exeunt]
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
ACT II
SCENE VII On board POMPEY's galley, off Misenum.
[Music plays. 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 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 partisan 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 OCTAVIUS CAESAR, MARK
ANTONY, LEPIDUS, POMPEY, AGRIPPA, MECAENAS,
DOMITIUS ENOBARBUS, MENAS, with other captains]
MARK ANTONY [To OCTAVIUS 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.
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