Three Shadows

I looked and saw your eyes
In the shadow of your hair,
As a traveller sees the stream
In the shadow of the wood;
And I said, “My faint heart sighs,
Ah me! to linger there,
To drink deep and to dream
In that sweet solitude.”
I looked and saw your heart
In the shadow of your eyes,
As a seeker sees the gold
In the shadow of the stream;
And I said, “Ah me! what art
Should win the immortal prize,
Whose want must make life cold
And Heaven a hollow dream?”
I looked and saw your love
In the shadow of your heart,
As a diver sees the pearl
In the shadow of the sea;
And I murmured, not above
My breath, but all apart,—
“Ah! you can love, true girl,
And is your love for me?”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Three Shadows’ (1876) 

Hope

And yet our lot is given us in a land
Where busy arts are never at a stand;
Where science points her telescopic eye,
Familiar with the wonders of the sky;
Where bold inquiry, diving out of sight,
Brings many a precious pearl of truth to light;
Where nought eludes the persevering quest,
That fashion, taste, or luxury suggest.

William Cowper, ‘Hope’ (1782), extract 

In Praise of Angling

Here are no entrapping baits
To hasten to too hasty fates;
Unless it be
The fond credulity
Of silly fish, which (worldling like) still look
Upon the bait, but never on the hook;
Nor envy, ‘less among
The birds, for prize of their sweet song.

Go, let the diving negro seek
For gems, hid in some forlorn creek;
We all pearls scorn,
Save what the dewy morn
Congeals upon each little spire of grass,
Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass;
And gold ne’er here appears,
Save what the yellow Ceres bears.

Blest silent groves, O, may you be
Forever mirth’s best nursery!
May pure contents
Forever pitch their tents
Upon these downs, these rocks, these mountains,
And peace still slumber by these purling fountains,
Which we may every year
Meet, when we come a-fishing here.

Henry Wotton, ‘In Praise of Angling’ (16??), last three stanzas

A Florida Ghost

Down mildest shores of milk-white sand,
By cape and fair Floridian bay,
Twixt billowy pines — a surf asleep on land —
And the great Gulf at play,

Past far-off palms that filmed to nought,
Or in and out the cunning keys
That laced the land like fragile patterns wrought
To edge old broideries,

The sail sighed on all day for joy,
The prow each pouting wave did leave
All smile and song, with sheen and ripple coy,
Till the dusk diver Eve

Brought up from out the brimming East
The oval moon, a perfect pearl.
In that large lustre all our haste surceased,
The sail seemed fain to furl,

The silent steersman landward turned,
And ship and shore set breast to breast.
Under a palm wherethrough a planet burned
We ate, and sank to rest.

Sidney Lanier, ‘A Florida Ghost’ (1877), first five stanzas 

The Sphinx

His long hair was nine cubits’ span and coloured
like that yellow gem
Which hidden in their garment’s hem the
merchants bring from Kurdistan.

His face was as the must that lies upon a vat of
new-made wine:
The seas could not insapphirine the perfect azure
of his eyes.

His thick soft throat was white as milk and
threaded with thin veins of blue:
And curious pearls like frozen dew were
broidered on his flowing silk.

On pearl and porphyry pedestalled he was
too bright to look upon:
For on his ivory breast there shone the wondrous
ocean-emerald,

That mystic moonlit jewel which some diver of
the Colchian caves
Had found beneath the blackening waves and
carried to the Colchian witch.

Oscar Wilde, ‘The Sphinx’ (1894), stanzas 45-49

The Australian Bell-Bird

I took the left, and for some cause unknown
Full fraught of hope and joy the way pursued,
Yet chose strong reasons speeding up alone
To fortify me ‘gainst a shock more rude.
E’en so the diver carrieth down a stone
In hand, lest he float up before he would,
And end his walk upon the rich sea-floor,
Those pearls he failed to grasp never to look on more.

Jean Ingelow, ‘The Australian Bell-Bird’ (1863?), stanza

The Wings of the Dove

The thought was all his own, and his intimate companion was the last person he might have shared it with. He kept it back like a favourite pang; left it behind him, so to say, when he went out, but came home again the sooner for the certainty of finding it there. Then he took it out of its sacred corner and its soft wrappings; he undid them one by one, handling them, handling it, as a father, baffled and tender, might handle a maimed child. But so it was before him – in his dread of who else might see it. Then he took to himself at such hours, in other words, that he should never, never know what had been in Milly’s letter. The intention announced in it he should but too probably know; only that would have been, but for the depths of his spirit, the least part of it. The part of it missed for ever was the turn she would have given her act. This turn had possibilities that, somehow, by wondering about them, his imagination had extraordinarily filled out and refined. It had made of them a revelation the loss of which was like the sight of a priceless pearl cast before his eyes – his pledge given not to save it – into the fathomless sea, or rather even it was like the sacrifice of something sentient and throbbing, something that, for the spiritual ear, might have been audible as a faint far wail.

Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902), book tenth, VI.

Little Women

“‘Bosun’s mate, take a bight of the flying-jib sheet, and start this villain if he doesn’t confess his sins double quick,’ said the British captain. The Portuguese held his tongue like a brick, and walked the plank, while the jolly tars cheered like mad. But the sly dog dived, came up under the man-of-war, scuttled her, and down she went, with all sail set, ‘To the bottom of the sea, sea, sea’ where …”

“Oh, gracious! What shall I say?” cried Sallie, as Fred ended his rigmarole, in which he had jumbled together pell-mell nautical phrases and facts out of one of his favorite books. “Well, they went to the bottom, and a nice mermaid welcomed them, but was much grieved on finding the box of headless knights, and kindly pickled them in brine, hoping to discover the mystery about them, for being a woman, she was curious. By-and-by a diver came down, and the mermaid said, ‘I’ll give you a box of pearls if you can take it up,’ for she wanted to restore the poor things to life, and couldn’t raise the heavy load herself. So the diver hoisted it up, and was much disappointed on opening it to find no pearls. He left it in a great lonely field …”

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868-69), chapter twelve.

The story being told is a rig-marole, described by Alcott as where “one person begins a story, any nonsense you like, and tells as long as he pleases, only taking care to stop short at some exciting point, when the next takes it up and does the same.”

A Tragedy of Error

“The pearls in that watch are costly because it’s worth a man’s life to get at them. You want me to be your pearl diver. Be it so. You must guarantee me a safe descent …”

Henry James, ‘A Tragedy of Error’ (1864), line from short story.

‘A Tragedy of Error’ was Henry James’ first published story (it was published anonymously). The words are spoken by a boatman to whom a woman has offered a watch with pearls.

Yétima

Many sailors have spoken to me of the famous pearl known by the name of Yétima (orphan), because it has not its like in the world. These are the details of its history as they have been told to me. There was, in Oman, a man called Muslim, son of Becher. He was a pious man and well behaved, his trade the fitting out of divers for the pearl fishery. He had a considerable fortune; but his business with the divers was so little successful that he lost all his property, and one fine day found himself bereft of everything, without food, without garments, without a single object by which he could obtain money, with the exception of a bracelet worth a hundred dinars belonging to his wife.

“Give it to me,” he said to his wife, “so that I may use the money from it to fit out some more divers; perhaps God will favour us with some good fortune.” “Come, come,” said his wife, “We have no other means of subsistence. Let us live on the price of this bracelet, rather than lose it in the sea!”

But the husband knew how to cozen her and took the bracelet, which he sold. All this money was used to equip the divers, with whom he set out for the fisheries. It had been arranged that the fishing should last two months and no longer. For fifty-nine days the men dived, brought up oysters and opened them, but found nothing. On the sixtieth day they dived in the name of Eblis (Satan) “whom may God curse!” and this time they brought back an oyster containing a pearl of great value; it may have been worth all the property ever owned by Muslim from the day of his birth until that very day. “See,” said the fishermen, “what we have found in the name of Eblis!” Muslim took the pearl, ground it to powder and threw it into the sea.

“What!” said the divers, “is that how you treat it? You have nothing left, you are reduced to destitution; you come across a magnificent pearl which is probably worth millions of dinars and you grind it to dust!” “Glory be to God!” he replied. “Would it have been lawful for me to profit by good fortune obtained in the name of Eblis? God would not have blessed it. He permitted this pearl to fall into my hands in order to try me. If I had kept it, you would all have followed my example and would have dived only in the name of Eblis, a sin for the gravity of which no profit, not even the greatest, could atone. By the one and only God! if I were to have all the pearls of the sea, I would not wish for them at such a price. Go, dive again, and say: ‘ In the name of God and by His blessing!’”

The fishers dived again according to his orders and the prayer at the setting of the sun had not yet been said on that day, which was the last of the sixty, before they laid their hands on two pearls, one of which was the Yétima and the other of less value. Muslim took them both to the Caliph Rachid. He sold him the Yétima for 70,000 dirhems and the small one for 30,000, and returned to Oman with 100,000 dirhems. He built there a large house, bought slaves and acquired property. His house is well-known in Oman; and that is the story of the pearl Yétima.

Adja ib Al-Hind (The Marvels of India), tenth century, reproduced in Leonard Rosenthal, The Kingdom of the Pearl (Au Royaume de la Perle) (1919).

This is one of the historic texts cited on Leonard Rosenthal’s classic collection on the history of pearls, Au Royaume de la Pearle (1919), illustrated by Edmund Dulac in the 1920 edition. According to the notes in an English edition, the citation for this Arabian text is M. Devic, Adja ib Al-Hind (The Marvels of India). Alphonse Lemerre, Paris. Unpublished Arabian work of the tenth century. Translated for the first time from a manuscript in the Schefer Collection, copied from a manuscript in the Saint Sophia Mosque at Constantinople. LXXXL., pp. 113—114 et seq.