That talk such mournful things; when straight a gale
Of startling sighs carry those pearls away,
As dews by winds are wafted from the flowers.”
Elena Piscopia (1684), of the Corraro family of Venice, had a medal struck in her honor, on the reverse of which is an open shell, receiving the drops of dew from heaven, which form into pearls: the motto was Rore divino—by the divine dew.
Pearls have for ages been significant for tears. It is related that Queen Margaret Tudor, consort of James IV. of Scotland, previous to the battle of Flodden Field, had strong presentiments of the disastrous issue of that conflict. One night she had fearful dreams, in which she thought she saw her husband hurled down a great precipice and crushed and mangled at the bottom. In another vision she thought, as she was looking at her jewels, chains, and sparkling coronets of diamonds, they suddenly turned into pearls, “which are the emblems of widowhood and tears.”
A few nights before the assassination of Henry IV. of France, his queen dreamed that all the jewels in her crown were changed into pearls, and she was told that they were significant of tears.
Milton, in his “Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester,” says:
“And those pearls of dew she wears
Prove to be presaging tears.”
Similes of pearls and tears are frequent in our old writers. Thus Shakspere in “Midsummer Night’s Dream:”