To the small rill, that weeps along
Murmuring o'er beds of pearl.
Betraying as he did so frequently in his poems, such a high regard for the pearl, it is somewhat curious that the gem was used descriptively in connection with himself. N. P. Willis, describing Thomas Moore as he met him at Lady Blessington's said of him, "His forehead shines with the lustre and smooth polish of a pearl."
Schiller takes the gem from the warm touch of human sentiment and builds it into a grand conception, poetical but untrue to Nature. In common with other poets, he credits the pearl with a play of color seldom found even to a limited degree though it does occur in the mother-of-pearl. In "Parables and Riddles," he describes the rainbow thus:
A bridge of pearls its fabric weaves,
A gray sea arching proudly over.
In "The Celebrated Woman" he alludes twice to pearls; once when the husband, bemoaning the passage of his choice vintages down the throats of unappreciative celebrities, realizes that the only reward from his spouse for his endurance of it is, "sour looks—deep sighs." Because he has no stomach for her notables and their wit, she regrets—
That such a pearl should fall to swine—
Later on the husband refers satirically to the meeting of "learned Dons and folks of fashion" at their resorts, where he says: