Especially in the Orient, where it was first widely known, there have been many uses of the pearl. It was combined in jewels, used alone in many-stranded chains, woven into garments, woven in or hung upon tapestries that decked the walls of palaces. It was embroidered not only on women’s garments, but on priestly and ceremonial robes. There can hardly be a treasure in which the precious stones are not accompanied by pearls.
The soft lustre of the pearl, and its natural shape, inevitably linked it with the teardrop. Indeed, what are pearls but the crystalline tears of the angels, weeping over man’s indiscretions? The Romantics suggested that the pearl may sometimes bring tears. The materialists retorted that the tears were of vexation, shed by those that could not afford the pearls. But every morning of a clear June day, the teardrops are on every blade of grass, the glistening dew that is the brief land-pearl.
Hand in hand
All over the land
Lover leads his girl;
Merrily wedded,
Cosily bedded:
June’s for the shimmering pearl.