Thomasina thinks for a moment, before deciding on something to give as an example. Then she recites:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd 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, 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 divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.

She pauses at the end, then adds. It's Shakespeare - from the play Antony and Cleopatra - and, by definition, drama, as it is composed of dialogue intended for performance. But my tutor once set me this speech, translated into Latin, as an unseen translation exercise, and in that tongue it was poetry. My translation did not meet that standard. She smiles, self-deprecatingly.

(Reply to this)(Parent)