Another Pearl

Let’s walk to the sound of distant shells
To a place where life would have no end
You’d be the mother of my pearls
If you follow me into my world
Back to the place where we’d be free
Where I’d love you and you’d love me
This is the colour of my world
Watch me find another pearl

Badly Drawn Boy (Damon Gough), ‘Another Pearl’ (2000), last verse.

From the album ‘The Hour of Bewilderbeast’.

A Drop fell on the Apple Tree

A Drop fell on the Apple Tree -
Another – on the Roof -
A Half a Dozen kissed the Eaves -
And made the Gables laugh -

A few went out to help the Brook
That went to help the Sea -
Myself conjectured were they Pearls -
What Necklaces could be -

The Dust replaced, in Hoisted Roads -
The Birds jocoser sung -
The Sunshine threw his Hat away -
The Bushes – spangles flung -

The Breezes brought dejected Lutes -
And bathed them in the Glee -
Then Orient showed a single Flag,
And signed the Fete away -

Emily Dickinson, ‘A Drop fell on the Apple Tree’ (c.1863)

The Merry Widow

Women, women, women,
Women, women, women,
You may study their ways if you can,
But a woman’s too much for a man,
It is deeper than diving for pearls
Courting girls, girls, girls, girls, girls!

Franz Léhar, ‘Women’, from The Merry Widow (1905) (English lyric by Adrian Ross; original lyrics by Victor Léon and Leo Stein)