The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
  Burned 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 beggared 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 diverse coloured fans, whose wind did seem
  To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
  And what they undid, did. 
  Her gentlewomen, like the Nereids,
  So many mermaids, tended her i’ the eyes,
  And made their bends adornings:  At the helm
  A seeming mermaid steers:  The silken tackle
  Swells with the touches of those flower-soft hands
  That yarely frame the office.  From the barge
  A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
  Of the adjacent wharfs.  The city cast
  Her people out upon her; and Antony,
  Enthroned in the market-place, did sit alone,
  Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
  Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
  And made a gap in nature.
                               Antony and Cleopatra, Act i.  Scene 2.

The parallel passage in Dryden runs thus: 

The tackling silk, the streamers waved with gold,
The gentle winds were lodged in purple sails: 
Her nymphs, like Nereids, round her couch were placed;
Where she, another sea-born Venus, lay,

Dola. No more:  I would not hear it,

Ant. O, you must!  She lay, and leant her cheek upon her hand, And cast a look so languishingly sweet, As if secure of all beholders hearts, Neglecting she could take them:  Boys, like Cupids, Stood fanning, with their painted wings, the winds That played about her face!  But if she smiled, A darting glory secured to blaze abroad:  That men’s desiring eyes were never wearied, But hung upon the object:  To soft flutes The silver oars kept time; and while they played, The hearing gave new pleasure to the sight; And both to thought.  ’Twas heaven, or somewhat more; For she so charmed all hearts, that gazing crowds Stood panting on the shore, and wanted breath To give their welcome voice.  Then, Dolabella, where was then thy soul?  Was not thy fury quite disarmed with murder?  Didst thou not shrink behind me from those eyes, And whisper in my ear, Oh, tell her not That I accused her of my brother’s death?

In judging betwixt these celebrated passages, we feel almost afraid to avow a preference of Dryden, founded partly upon the easy flow of the verse, which seems to soften with the subject, but chiefly upon the beauty of the language and imagery, which is flowery without diffusiveness, and rapturous without hyperbole.  I fear Shakespeare cannot be exculpated from the latter fault; yet I am sensible, it is by sifting his beauties from his conceits that his imitator has been enabled to excel him.