Pearl in Emerson's Poetry

This high atmosphere of precious supremacy and reverence, which surrounds the gem now as it has for more than twenty centuries, is a legacy of Rome. The east loved pearls as beautiful and precious trinkets; while Rome gave to them imperial honors and drew around them the mystic circle of patrician favor. And since that day, in every land where an aristo¬cracy existed or came into existence, pearls have been the familiars of the exclusive.

This natural fitness of the gem for refined associations is recognized by Emerson in his Friendship，He says:

Thou foolish Hafiz! Say! Do churls know the worth of Oman's pearls? Give the gem which dims the moon to the noblest, or to none.

It is a late echo of the scriptural saying, "Cast not your pearls before swine." No modern poet shows more knowledge of the nature, or a more just appreciation of the delicate beauty of the gem than Emerson. In his "May Day," speaking of the tardiness of the spring, he writes: "Slow grows the palm, too slow the pearl."

Evidently he knew of the slow process by which the successive coats of filmy nacre increase the size of the growing gem. Likewise a couplet in "Nature " betrays the poet's obser¬vation of the iridescent nature of the colors in mother-of-pearl, and in the gem occasionally when those fleeting tints are added to the beauty of its luster; the lines are a dainty illustration:

Illusions like the tints of pearl, Or changing colors of the sky.

The Luster of the Pearl

In all countries where woman has been enthroned in the respect as well as the affections of man, the pearl has been inseparably connected with her. The pearl as a peculiarly fitting accompaniment to feminine loveliness is deeply rooted.

In the romantic dreams of youth, which hide betimes the harsh realism of life under a golden haze of imagery; where belted knights and fair ladies live and move unfettered, and all the impossible delights of sweet desire free from untoward consequences are reasonable; where invincible swords have no thought of the horrors of carnage, and unimpeded love is without cold calculation or following of sorrow, pearls everywhere shimmer. And when in his exalted moods man paints the shadow picture of the goddess of his life, he finds one gem alone befitting with which to deck her, namely, the pearl. This has come to pass probably because the ideal qualities of woman and the sea gem are alike, purity and modesty. The beauty of the most lustrous pearl is unobtrusive and its quality is virginal. In our visions of the spectral past, the shades of the consorts of the mighty all wear them.

Pearls hang pendent from the ears of Egypt's voluptuous queens, and Rome's proud matrons. Pearls clasp the dainty flesh of Moslem hour is and rest in the soft folds of draperies that cling about those daughters of the Orient, the com¬mon mortals of their day might not look upon. Great pearls hang festooned and pendent round the necks of lightly draped Diana of the warm south lands, and coiled about the brown arms of the daughters of the chiefs in far-off islands of the South Seas.

Upon reclining figures in the ancient palaces of Persia and Arab tents: wherever the proud women of the conquering Occident move in

stately measure across the high terraces of noble placement: in all dreams of fair women and brave men, are swords and pearls. And this is so because in all the ages, women of high position have loved pearls and writers have told it. In our old world so far, neither earth nor sea has yielded ought to else so fit to lie in the bosom of woman, or to symbolize her character and beauty, as the chaste and dainty pearl.