Against you come, some orient pearls unwept.
The same poet makes charming reference to pearls in his poem entitled:
"To Daffodils."
Or as the pearls of morning dew
Ne'er to be found again.
Shakespeare made frequent reference to the gem, sometimes to illustrate
the magnificence of wealth and station but more frequently in
connection with dew and tears. Oberon says:
And that same dew, which some time on the buds
Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls.
King Richard III. when he argues with Queen Elizabeth for her daughter's
hand in marriage, promises with smooth and brazen villainy to so offset
the wrongs he had done her, that:
The liquid drops of tears that you have shed
Shall come again, transformed to orient pearls.
In "King John" Elinor speaking to Constance of Arthur, says, "Draw
those heaven moving pearls from his poor eyes;" and in "King Lear," one
of the gentlemen, speaking of the Queen of France when she received the
news he carried, describes her mood thus:
Those happy smilets,
That played on her ripe lip, seemed not to know
What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.
In "Midsummer Night's Dream," Lysander says to Helen:
To-morrow night, when Phœbe doth behold
Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass.
Among his recognitions of pearls as a sign of the luxury of wealth and
high position, he makes a lord say, in the "Taming of the Shrew,"
Or wilt thou ride? Thy horses shall be trapp'd
Their harness studded all with gold and pearl.
And in "King Henry V," the King while deploring the sorrows incident to
kingship, says:
'Tis not
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl
That beats upon the high shore of this world.
These two quotations indicate that the Roman custom of decorating
robes and even the harness of horses with pearls was followed in
Shakespeare's day by the nobles.
A line suggestive of the high-esteem in which the pearl was held in
his day, and often quoted, occurs in Othello's grand but heart-broken
self-denunciation just before he stabs himself:
Of one, whose hand
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away,
Richer than all his tribe.
It is evident also that stories were current then of the western
Indian's ignorant prodigality in the disposition of things common to
him but very precious among more enlightened people.
In "King Richard III," Duke Clarence sees in his dream of drowning,
"Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl."
Several times the great dramatist puts the gem in somewhat grewsome
setting. In "A Sea Dirge" however, the bare horror of the idea which
grins at one in similar connections, is transformed by the poetry in
which it is draped:
These are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
A favorite use of the sea-gem by the lighter poets is to adorn their
images of physical beauty. In "Don Juan," Byron, describing one of the
Turk's houris in the harem, says:
Was slumbering with soft breath,
And lips apart, which show'd the pearls beneath,
and another poet writes similarly:
Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearls a double row.
Shelley confines his references to pearls almost entirely to
descriptions of Nature dew-bedecked, as in the "Revolt of Islam,"
I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled
With dew from the mild streamlet's shattered wave,
and another in "Prometheus Unbound" where the chorus of spirits sing:
Nor aught save where some cloud of dew,
Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
Of the green laurel blown anew.
In "Arethusa" he uses them to enhance the idea of regal magnificence in
these lines:
Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearlèd thrones.
The poets rarely refer to the gem as a symbol of spiritual attributes
though it is peculiarly adapted by its natural qualities to illustrate
purity, innocence, and other qualities of the human soul: nor is it
often connected with religious ideas. Among the few, Andrew Marvell in
his "Song of the Emigrants in Burmuda," avails himself of it somewhat
prosaically thus,
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The Gospel's pearl upon our coast.
One of the most poetically beautiful references ever made to the
Ocean's modest jewel occurs in the "The Rosary" by Robert Cameron
Rogers.
The hours I spend with thee, dear heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me;
I count them over every one apart,
My rosary.
Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer,
To still a heart in absence wrung;
I tell each bead unto the end, and there
A cross is hung.
No poet has made more frequent allusion to pearls than Thomas Moore. His
poems give evidence that he had read much of them in ancient writings
and was alive to their poetic value. In his description of Ireland in
"Fairest! Put on Awhile," the lines—
Lakes, where the pearl lies hid,
And caves, where the gem is sleeping,
were founded on the statements of Nennius, a British writer of the IXth
century, concerning Irish pearls. In passing, it is worthy of notice
that Nennius recorded also that the princes of Ireland hung them behind
their ears; a fashion similar to that of Persian and Athenian youth
many centuries earlier. From Cardanus, Moore learned of the ancient
fable that pearls were improved by leaving them awhile with doves, and
utilizes the fancy in "A Dream of Antiquity" thus:
As pearls, we're told, that fondling doves
Have played with, wear a smoother whiteness.
An early reference to the gem is found in his "Odes of Anacreon" No.
XXII:
Or even those envious pearls that show
So faintly round that neck of snow—
If this ode was really written by Anacreon, that poet must have been
more familiar with pearls than some later Grecian writers. A similar
idea quite as beautifully expressed occurs in "The Loves of the Angels."
Then too the pearl from out its shell
Unsightly, in the sunless sea,
(As 'twere a spirit, forced to dwell
In form unlovely) was set free,
And round the neck of woman threw
A light it lent and borrowed too.
Unlike most of the poets, Moore does not describe the sparkling
dew-drop as pearly and his references to tears of pearls include the
idea of metamorphosis, as in "The Light of the Haram."
And precious their tears as that rain from the sky,
Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea.
These lines embody the ancient Hindu superstition which is also
apparent in his "Lines to—:"
Put off the fatal zone you wear,
The shining pearls around it
Are tears, that fell from Virtue there,
The hour when Love unbound it.
In his adoration of female beauty, he often holds the lustrous gem as a
foil to the exceeding charms of woman, or to lift her to higher esteem
by holding her, for preciousness, above the gem. Beyond all other
things most lovely, only woman was lovelier yet. In "To weave a Garland
for the Rose," he writes:
Where is the pearl whose orient lustre
Would not, beside thee, look less bright?
And in one of the "Odes to Nea," he expresses the jealous regard of
love thus:
If I were yonder conch of gold
And thou the pearl within it placed,
I would not let an eye behold
The sacred gem my arms embraced.
Of the threads in which the woof of "The Genius of Harmony" is woven,
there is one that sings thus to the passing of the shuttle:
To the small rill, that weeps along
Murmuring o'er beds of pearl.
Betraying as he did so frequently in his poems, such a high regard for
the pearl, it is somewhat curious that the gem was used descriptively
in connection with himself. N. P. Willis, describing Thomas Moore as he
met him at Lady Blessington's said of him, "His forehead shines with
the lustre and smooth polish of a pearl."
Schiller takes the gem from the warm touch of human sentiment and
builds it into a grand conception, poetical but untrue to Nature. In
common with other poets, he credits the pearl with a play of color
seldom found even to a limited degree though it does occur in the
mother-of-pearl. In "Parables and Riddles," he describes the rainbow
thus:
A bridge of pearls its fabric weaves,
A gray sea arching proudly over.
In "The Celebrated Woman" he alludes twice to pearls; once when the
husband, bemoaning the passage of his choice vintages down the throats
of unappreciative celebrities, realizes that the only reward from his
spouse for his endurance of it is, "sour looks—deep sighs." Because he
has no stomach for her notables and their wit, she regrets—
That such a pearl should fall to swine—
Later on the husband refers satirically to the meeting of "learned Dons
and folks of fashion" at their resorts, where he says:
All sorts of Fame sit cheek-by-jowl,
Pearls in that string—the Table d'Hote.
Few later writers have set the pearl in as wide a range of ideas or in
language as beautiful as Edmund Spenser. The tears of Stella in "The
Mourning Muse of Thestylis" are more precious and gem-like than those
in any lines which have followed until now. In these lines they are
priceless jewels royally set.
And from those two bright starres to him sometime so deere,
Her heart sent drops of pearle, which fell in foyson downe
Twixt lilly and the rose.
As a means to wake imagination to the physical charms of woman his use
of the gem is equally happy and graceful, for there is always a soul in
the flesh of his beauty as when he depicts the charms of a fair one in
one of his "Sonnets."
But fairest she, when so she doth display
The gate with pearles and rubyes richly dight;
Through which her words so wise do make their way
To bear the message of her gentle spright.
In another place he expresses the worship of his love in this fashion:
For loe, my love doth in her selfe containe
All this worlds riches that may farre be found;
If Pearles, her teeth be Pearles, both pure and round.
Several of his poems show the fashion of pearls in his day as for
instance where he describes the Scarlet Lady in "The Faerie Queene" as—
A goodly Lady clad in scarlet red,
Purfled with gold and pearle of rich assay.
and Hymen in "Epithalamion"—
Her long loose yellow locks lyke golden wyre,
Sprinckled with perle.
There is a passing breath of spice-laden gales and the wonder magic of
ships in far-off seas, carrying to perils and adventure men seeking
the treasures of strange lands, while he tells in Virgil's Gnat of the
shepherd's content:
Ne ought the whelky pearles esteemeth hee,
Which are from Indian seas brought far away.
Poets are reminded not only of the teeth and neck of beauty by the
luster of the pearl but of the forehead also. Whittier like Tennyson
gives to woman a brow of pearl. In "Memories" the girl has—
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl,
and in "Stanzas," he places the beauty of flesh above that of the
dainty jewel thus:
O'er a forehead more pure than the Parian stone—
Shaming the light of those Orient pearls
Which bind o'er its whiteness thy soft wreathing curls.
Similarly Heinrich Heine in Longfellow's translation of "The Sea hath
its Pearls" says:
And fairer than pearls and stars
Flashes and beams my love.
Probably in no poem is the pearl referred to so frequently or with
so wide significance as in Whittier's "The Vaudois Teacher." The
missionary in his guise of peddler having obtained an audience with the
fair chatelaine, while extolling his wares, says:
And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, with whose radiant
light they vie.
Naturally, this wisdom of the serpent with which his innocence was
garnished brought favorable response:
And the lady smiled on the worn old man through the dark and
clustering curls,
Which veiled her brow as she bent to view his silks and glittering
pearls.
After she had bought of his trinkets, the old teacher carefully
introduces the covered object of his visit.
Oh, lady fair, I have yet a gem which a purer lustre flings,
Than the diamond flash of the jewelled crown on the lofty brow
of Kings,
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, whose virtue shall not decay.
This statement at once arouses a keen interest, for in those days great
gems came from unexpected sources and by unlikely hands and coming
seldom, excited desire to an extent unknown in these abundant times.
Glancing at the mirrored pearls in her own hair the lady says:
Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, thou traveller gray
and old—
And name the price of thy precious gem, and my page shall count
thy gold.
Here is the golden opportunity of the zealot. From its place of
concealment beneath the tempting wares in his pack he takes a shabby
little book and gives it to her saying:
Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may it proove as such
to thee,
Nay—keep thy gold—I ask it not; for the Word of God is free!
Nor does the religious mind of Whittier fail to remember the gates of
pearl, for in "Ego" he speaks of
The pearl gates of the Better Land.
Carlyle makes reference to the gem in a line greater in conception
and more poetic than most of those which occur in the rhymes of the
poets—"She died in beauty, like a pearl dropped from some diadem."
In Ruffini's "Dr. Antonio," man and woman are set in marriage as a
foil and complement of each other though the metaphor shows some
misunderstanding of the qualities of gems, for black diamonds are not
as fiery as others. The lines are:
The fiery black diamond casting lustre over the Oriental pearl: the
Oriental pearl in return lending softness to the black diamond.
Dryden does not forget pearls when he caparisons the royal mighty and
in "Palamon and Arcite" fitly thus describes Emetrius, King of Inde:
His surcoat o'er his arms was cloth of Thrace,
Adorned with pearls all orient, round and great.
It is remarkable that so many poets have seen in the pearl a simile
for raindrops and dew. Among them, Browning in the song from "Pippa
Passes," sees—
The hill-side's dew-pearled.
At its best, the pearl is not luminous, neither does it flash nor
sparkle: the quality of it is softly lustrous as of light that
smolders; but transferring by imagery the mist-white texture of
dew when it is spread over leaf and grass blade, to the transparent
dew-drop, poets see in the sparkling globule, which in the sun is of
diamantine brilliancy, a simile of the pearl.
In "By the Fireside" however, Browning creates a rain of pearls, a
truer figure than pearly raindrops:
Break the rosary in a pearly rain,
And gather what we let fall.
The metaphors of Lowell are more true to the nature of the pearl and
its characteristics than those of many poets. One, seldom used though
most appropriate, occurs in "The First Snow Fall."
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.
Another instance of combined truth and poetry may be found in "An
Invitation":
A cloud Byzantium newly born,
With flickering spires and dome of pearl.
And in "Pictures from Appledore" the same poet in the embodiment of a
delightful idea in words says of the moon:
Rather to call it the canoe
Hollowed out of a single pearl.
In these illustrations, imagination is true to nature on either hand,
for the beady ridges of the half melted or frozen snow on the tree
twigs, the soft luster of a white cloud dome and the pale round moon,
alike are characterized by beauties which are pearly. In his more
involved metaphor the same nice avoidance of incongruity is noticeable.
Though raindrops are not pearly, the white fringe of a shore-driven
wave is, which he notes in "Sea-Weed":
For the same wave that rims the Carib shore
With momentary brede of pearl and gold.
There is a hint of Cleopatra and Sir Thomas Gresham in his lines "To H.
W. L."
Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost;
and in the lines from "Memoria Positum" there is an understanding of
the processes by which the gem grows:
This death hath far choicer ends
Than slowly to impearl in hearts of friends;
and in the poetic fancy in "A Familiar Epistle to a Friend"—
Old sorrows crystallized into pearls.
Nor does he omit the time-honored custom of poets to place the gem
among the chief jewels of the great and in the mouth of beauty, for
in "The Singing Leaves" he makes the King's eldest daughter ask of her
royal father when he journeys:
O, bring me pearls and diamonds great,
and in "A Fable for Critics" he says:
Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom girl,
With lips like a cherry and teeth like a pearl.
Bryant does not often allude to pearls, but in two instances, both in
"The Flood of Years," they appear in beautiful setting. In the first:
A beam like that of moonlight turns the spray
To glistening pearls.
Later on, describing the ocean of the past, he sees—
Dim glimmerings of lost jewels, far within
The sleeping waters, diamond, sardonyx,
Ruby and topaz, pearl and chrysolite.
The general use of pearls in the barbaric splendor of the great in
the days of Rome and Egypt and Persia, appears in Tasso's "Jerusalem
Delivered." In the wizard's dwelling:
Nor failed there urns of crystal, pearl, and gold,
and,
High on the Soldan's helm, in scales of pearl
A rampant dragon grinn'd malignant things;
and also,
The Pastors of the flocks
Have on their sacerdotal albs, which pass
In front divided o'er their golden frocks,
Clasp'd with aigraffes of pearl.
In the review of the oriental hordes, Armida's car is thus described,
Her car, that glorious as Aurora's roll'd,
With rubies, pearls, and hyacinths glisten'd clear.
Among those who passed the Egyptian prince, were:
The Islanders with fleecy curls,
Whose homes are compassed by th' Arabian waves;
By whom those shells which breed the Persian pearls
Are dived and fish'd for, in their green sea caves.
The name of the gem is used in rare fashion in picturing the enchanted
wood through which Rinaldo wanders:
Impearl'd with manna was each fresh leaf nigh.
And twice does the sweat of the human face become pearly in the poet's
imagination: once when Armida watches Rinaldo sleeping:
The living heat-dews that impearl'd his face,
She with her veil wiped tenderly away.
In the second instance, speaking of Armida, the poet says:
She dies
Of the sweet passion, and the heat that pearls,
Yet more her ardent aspect beautifies.
Thomson sees pearls only in the dew-impearled earth, and one must
admit, after looking upon the liquid globules hanging in rows from the
spreading twigs of trees before the morning sun has found them in their
shaded quarters, that the pendent spheres are suggestive, and that the
poet's eye needs but little assistance from imagination to see in them
the soft round gems of the ocean.
In all ages, prose and fiction have treated of pearls as a form of
exceeding preciousness and a chief evidence of high station and
barbaric splendor. The lute of poetry has held few additional strings.
Modern writers have added little to the imaginations of the ancients.
All the changes made by successive poets have been rung on the tears,
dew-drops, and beauty's teeth, handed down from long ago.
The wide ranges of the pearl's modest worth, exalted purity, and
singular beauty, yet remain to illustrate the thoughts of future
genius. Imagination has not yet brooded often over the humble and
distorted creatures, whose gnarled and twisted forms, lying among their
myriad shapely brethren are evidence of a precious sacrifice of self
to leave a heritage of beauty; nor dreamed of the silent acres under
turbulent waters where the gem, one day to adorn the neck of beauty
or the diadem of royalty, is reared. What play for imagination lies
between the birth of this creation of one of the humblest of Earth's
creatures, and the high placement to which it rises as soon as it is
discovered.
There are deserted wastes of sand and water under torrid skies,
populated almost momentarily with teeming multitudes whose jargon
fills the former silences with a world wide medley of tongues. As in
a dream, the tremulous air is stirred by the struggling movement of
naked slaves, turbanned orientals, men from all lands of the occident,
the moving throng weaving constantly new patterns from the variegated
colors and fantastic costumes of living threads. And everywhere,
beneath the prosaic motion of labor and trading, is the quiver of hope,
the excitement of the gambler; the poetry of human passions, unseen,
but felt.
There are in unfrequented seas, where some lonely atoll draws its
circle round a still lagoon, treasures greater than its cargo and the
stately ship sailing heedless by. So like the undiscovered pearls of
the ocean's bed, the universe holds an exhaustless store of thoughts
and truths for those who come after the discoverers of this age.
Thought runs in grooves and the grooves outlast many generations;
scarcely in a cycle does one look over the ridge and find a species
foreign to the rut.
Within the walls which the past builds for the present it is more easy
to adopt than to bring forth, and so the ancient metaphors, age after
age, are with some changes of raiment thrown back upon the world again.
But in this new era of acquisition, while this sea-gem is again lifted
to the serene heights of most exalted favor, perhaps it will not only
shine upon the persons of the fair, but adorn, in simile and metaphor
as beautiful as the old, the pages of romance and poetry.
GLOSSARY
ABALONE.—Name given on the California coast and in the United States
to the Haliotis.
BALL-PEARL.—Name given to round pearls by pearlers at the inland
fisheries of the United States.
BAROQUE.—A pearly formation of irregular shape.
BASE.—A basic price, subject to the square of the pearl's weight.
BASKETS.—Brass sieves used in India for separating pearls of different
sizes.
BLACK-SHELL.—Pearl oyster shells of which the nacreous lining has a
black-edge.
BLISTER.—A piece of the mother-of-pearl lining of a pearl-oyster
shell, raised above the surface like a blister.
BLUEBACKS.—Shell of a variety of Haliotis.
BLUE-PEARLS.—Dark, slaty blue-white pearls, principally from the
Mexican coast.
BOMBAY PEARLS.—Fine pearls from the Arabian and Red Seas, so named
because marketed through that city.
BUTTON PEARLS.—Shaped like a dome, high or low, rising from a plane
and called "high buttons," "buttons" or "low buttons," accordingly.
CLAMMER.—One who fishes for mussels by dredging for the shells
principally.
DEAD PEARLS.—Pearls with a chalky or waxy skin having little or no
luster.
DRESS.—Diving apparatus consisting of a one piece dress from the neck
down, corselet, helmet, air-pipes and life-line.
DROP-PEARL.—Ovoid, or obovoid, not necessarily of perfect shape.
DRILLED PEARLS.—Pearls with one hole for setting on peg, or quite
through the centre for stringing. Chinese drill two or three small
holes half way between circumference and bottom, for holding-wires.
EGG PEARLS.—Ovoid: shaped like an egg.
FLAT.—In connection with price quotation means, price per grain
regardless of size.
FRESH-WATER PEARLS.—Pearls taken from inland streams.
GREEN EARS.—Shell of Haliotis having green mother-of-pearl lining.
HALF PEARLS.—Round pearls sawed in half.
HELMET.—Diving head-gear.
LINGAHS.—Pearl oyster shells from the Arabian Sea and others of
similar size and quality.
MADRAS PEARLS.—Fine white pearls from the Ceylon fisheries, so called
because marketed principally in that city.
MANUL.—Loose or soft sand sea bottom (Ceylon).
MULTIPLE.—Price of pearls subject to the multiple of weight.
MUSSEL-EGG.—Name given to pearls by Tennesseans.
NACRE.—The substance of which pearls and the lining of pearl-shells
consists.
NAKED DIVING.—Diving without any appliances.
ORIENT.—As applied to pearls, the luster of the skin.
ORIENTAL PEARLS.—Generally, pearls from salt water; specifically,
pearls from the Indian Seas.
OUNCE PEARLS.—Poor grades sold by the ounce.
PAAR.—Ceylon name for rock or hard bottom oyster-bed.
PEARLER.—One who fishes for mussels for the pearls.
PEAR-SHAPE.—Shaped like a pear; obovoid.
PEELER.—A pearl with an imperfect skin, the removal of which would
improve the pearl.
RED-EARS.—Abalone shell with pearly red interior.
ROSE-PEARLS.—Pink, iridescent, fresh-water baroques.
SEED-PEARLS.—Very small round pearls.
SLUGS.—Nacreous excrescences from the Unio.
SKIN.—As applied to pearls, the outer layer of nacre.
SQUARE.—Method of reckoning the cost of a pearl of any size at a lot
price, by the square of price given, with the grain as a unit.