One Life of so much Consequence!

One Life of so much Consequence!
Yet I – for it – would pay -
My Soul’s entire income -
In ceaseless – salary -

One Pearl – to me – so signal -
That I would instant dive -
Although – I knew – to take it -
Would cost me – just a life!

The sea is full – I know it!
That – does not blur my Gem!
It burns – distinct from all the row -
Intact – in Diadem!

The life is thick – I know it!
Yet – not so dense a crowd -
But Monarchs – are perceptible -
Far down the dustiest Road!

Emily Dickinson, ‘One Life of so much Consequence!’ (c.1861)

Sohrab and Rustum

So followed, Rustum left his tents, and crossed
The camp, and to the Persian host appeared.
And all the Persians knew him, and with shouts
Hailed; but the Tartars knew not who he was.
And dear as the wet diver to the eyes
Of his pale wife who waits and weeps on shore,
By sandy Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf,
Plunging all day in the blue waves, at night,
Having made up his tale of precious pearls,
Rejoins her in their hut upon the sands -
So dear to the pale Persians Rustum came.

Matthew Arnold, ‘Sohrab and Rustum’ (1853), extract.

‘Sohrab and Rustum’ is based on an episode from the 11th-century Persian poet Abul Kasim Mansur’s Shahnama. It tells of the search of Sohrab for his father Rustum, head of the Persian forces, and their fatal battle (neither being aware of the other’s identity).

A Dialogue Betwixt Venus, Thetis, and Phoebus

Venus. I’ll woo thee with a kiss to come away.

Thetis. And I with forty for to stay.

Venus. I’ll give to thee the fair Adonis’ spear,
So thou wilt rise.

Thetis. And I, to keep thee here,
Will give a wreath of pearl as fair
As ever sea-nymph yet did wear.
‘Tis Thetis woos thee stay: O stay, O stay!

Venus. ‘Tis Venus woos thee rise: O come away!

Phoebus. To which of these shall I mine ear incline?

Peter Hausted, The Rival Friends (1631).

Peter Hausted was at Queen’s College, Cambridge when his only play in English, The Rival Friends, was performed before the King and Queen in March 1931. In classical mythology Thetis is a sea-nymph, one of the Nereids, and the mother of Achilles.

Pearl-Diving Kiki

Spoof toy advertisement from www.goblertoys.com

Venus and Adonis

Whereat amazed, as one that unaware
Hath dropped a precious jewel in the flood,
Or ’stonished as night-wanderers often are,
Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood;
Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
Having lost the fair discovery of her way …

William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis (1593)

On the memory of Mr Edward King, drown’d in the Irish Seas

I like not tears in tune, nor will I prize
His artificial grief that scans his eyes,
Mine weep down pious beads, but why should I
Confine them to the Muses Rosary?
I am no poet here; my pen’s the spout,
Where the rain water of my eyes runs out,
In pity of that name, whose fate we see
Thus copied out in griefs Hydrography:
The Muses are not Mermaids, though upon
His death the Ocean might turn Helicon …
… Some have affirm’d, that what on earth we find,
The Sea can parallel for shape and kind:
Books, arts and tongues were wanting, but in thee
Neptune hath got an University.
We’ll dive no more for pearl. The hope to see
Thy sacred reliques of mortality
Shall welcome storms, and make make the sea-man prize
His shipwrack now, more then his merchandize.
He shall embrace the waves, and to thy tombe
(As to a Royaller Exchange) shall come …
… When we have fill’d the rundlets of our eyes,
We’ll issue’t forth, and vent such elegies,
As that our tears shall seem the Irish Seas
We floating Islands, living Hebrides.

John Cleveland, ‘On the memory of Mr Edward King, drown’d in the Irish Seas’ (1638), extracts

Best Things dwell out of Sight

Best Things dwell out of Sight
The Pearl – the Just – Our Thought.

Must shun the Public Air
Legitimate, and Rare -

The Capsule of the Wind
The Capsule of the Mind

Exhibit here, as doth a Burr -
Germ’s Germ be where?

Emily Dickinson, ‘Best Things dwell out of Sight’ (c.1865)

For the Lady Olivia Porter, a Present upon a New-years Day

Goe! hunt the whiter Ermine! and present
His wealthy skin, and this dayes Tribute sent
To my Endimion’s Love; Though she be farre
More gently smooth, more soft than Ermines are!
Goe! climbe that Rock! and when thou there hast found
A Star, contracted in a Diamond,
Give it Endimion’s Love, whose glorious Eyes,
Darken the starry Jewels of the Skies!
Goe! dive into the Southern Sea! and when
Th’ast found (to trouble the nice sight of Men)
A swelling Pearle; and such whose single worth,
Boasts all the wonders which the Seas bring forth;
Give it Endimion’s Love! whose ev’ry Teare,
Would more enrich the skilful Jeweller.
How I command! how slowly they obey!
The churlish Tartar, will not hunt to-day:
Nor will that lazy, sallow Indian strive
To climbe the Rock, nor that dull Negro dive.
Thus Poets like to Kings (by trust deceiv’d)
Give oftner what is heard of, than receiv’d.

Sir William Davenant, ‘For the Lady Olivia Porter; a Present upon a New-years Day’ (1638)

Pan and Luna

But what means this? The downy swathes combine,
Conglobe, the smothery coy-caressing stuff
Curdles about her! Vain each twist and twine
Those lithe limbs try, encroached on by a fluff
Fitting as close as fits the dented spine
Its flexible ivory outside-flesh: enough!
The plumy drifts contract, condense, constringe,
Till she is swallowed by the feathery springe.

As when a pearl slips lost in the thin foam
Churned on a sea-shore, and, o’er-frothed, conceits
Herself safe-housed in Amphitrite’s dome, -
If, through the bladdery wave-worked yeast, she meets
What most she loathes and leaps from, – elf from gnome
No gladlier, – finds that safest of retreats
Bubble about a treacherous hand wide ope
To grasp her – (divers who pick pearls so grope) -

So lay this Maid-Moon clasped around and caught
By rough red Pan, the god of all that tract:
He it was schemed the snare thus subtly wrought
With simulated earth-breath, – wool-tufts packed
Into a billowy wrappage. Sheep far-sought
For spotless shearings yield such: take the fact
As learned Virgil gives it, – how the breed
Whitens itself forever: yes, indeed!

Robert Browning, ‘Pan and Luna’ (1880), stanzas 7-9.

One of Browning’s Dramatic Idyls, Second Series of 1880. The poem tells of the god Pan’s seduction of Luna (the Roman moon goddess).

The Chambered Nautilus

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main, -
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,-
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft steps its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings –

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-valulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, ‘The Chambered Nautilus’ (1858)