In "King Richard III," Duke Clarence sees in his dream of drowning, "Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl."
Several times the great dramatist puts the gem in somewhat grewsome setting. In "A Sea Dirge" however, the bare horror of the idea which grins at one in similar connections, is transformed by the poetry in which it is draped:
These are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
A favorite use of the sea-gem by the lighter poets is to adorn their images of physical beauty. In "Don Juan," Byron, describing one of the Turk's houris in the harem, says:
Was slumbering with soft breath,
And lips apart, which show'd the pearls beneath,
and another poet writes similarly: