And twice does the sweat of the human face become pearly in the poet's imagination: once when Armida watches Rinaldo sleeping:
The living heat-dews that impearl'd his face,
She with her veil wiped tenderly away.
In the second instance, speaking of Armida, the poet says:
She dies
Of the sweet passion, and the heat that pearls,
Yet more her ardent aspect beautifies.
Thomson sees pearls only in the dew-impearled earth, and one must admit, after looking upon the liquid globules hanging in rows from the spreading twigs of trees before the morning sun has found them in their shaded quarters, that the pendent spheres are suggestive, and that the poet's eye needs but little assistance from imagination to see in them the soft round gems of the ocean.
In all ages, prose and fiction have treated of pearls as a form of exceeding preciousness and a chief evidence of high station and barbaric splendor. The lute of poetry has held few additional strings. Modern writers have added little to the imaginations of the ancients. All the changes made by successive poets have been rung on the tears, dew-drops, and beauty's teeth, handed down from long ago.