Adorned with pearls all orient, round and great.
It is remarkable that so many poets have seen in the pearl a simile for raindrops and dew. Among them, Browning in the song from "Pippa Passes," sees—
The hill-side's dew-pearled.
At its best, the pearl is not luminous, neither does it flash nor sparkle: the quality of it is softly lustrous as of light that smolders; but transferring by imagery the mist-white texture of dew when it is spread over leaf and grass blade, to the transparent dew-drop, poets see in the sparkling globule, which in the sun is of diamantine brilliancy, a simile of the pearl.
In "By the Fireside" however, Browning creates a rain of pearls, a truer figure than pearly raindrops:
Break the rosary in a pearly rain,
And gather what we let fall.
The metaphors of Lowell are more true to the nature of the pearl and its characteristics than those of many poets. One, seldom used though most appropriate, occurs in "The First Snow Fall."
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.