The father calls himself a jeweller; the pearl is his daughter. He has lost the pearl in the grass; it has gone to the ground, and he cannot find it; that is, his daughter is dead and buried. Perhaps the most touching line is one in which he says to the grave:
O moul, thou marrez a myry mele.
(O mould, thou marrest a merry talk.)
The poet, who is surely the father himself, cannot always keep up the allegory; his heart burns holes in it constantly; at one time he says she, at another it, and, between the girl and the pearl, the poem is bewildered. But the allegory helps him out with what he means notwithstanding; for although the highest aim of poetry is to say the deepest things in the simplest manner, humanity must turn from mode to mode, and try a thousand, ere it finds the best. The individual, in his new endeavour to make "the word cousin to the deed," must take up the forms his fathers have left him, and add to them, if he may, new forms of his own. In both the great revivals of literature, the very material of poetry was allegory.
The father falls asleep on his child's grave, and has a dream, or rather a vision, of a country where everything—after the childish imagination which invents differences instead of discovering harmonies—is super-naturally beautiful: rich rocks with a gleaming glory, crystal cliffs, woods with blue trunks and leaves of burnished silver, gravel of precious Orient pearls, form the landscape, in which are delicious fruits, and birds of flaming colours and sweet songs: its loveliness no man with a tongue is worthy to describe. He comes to the bank of a river:
Swinging sweet the water did sweep
With a whispering speech flowing adown;
(Wyth a rownande rourde raykande aryght)
and the stones at the bottom were shining like stars. It is a noteworthy specimen of the mode in which the imagination works when invention is dissociated from observation and faith. But the sort of way in which some would improve the world now, if they might, is not so very far in advance of this would-be glorification of Nature. The barest heath and sky have lovelinesses infinitely beyond the most gorgeous of such phantasmagoric idealization of her beauties; and the most wretched condition of humanity struggling for existence contains elements of worth and future development inappreciable by the philanthropy that would elevate them by cultivating their self-love.
At the foot of a crystal cliff, on the opposite side of the river, which he cannot cross, he sees a maiden sitting, clothed and crowned with pearls, and wearing one pearl of surpassing wonder and spotlessness upon her breast. I now make the spelling and forms of the words as modern as I may, altering the text no further.
"O pearl," quoth I, "in perlés pight, pitched, dressed. Art thou my pearl that I have plained? mourned. Regretted by myn one, on night? by myself. Much longing have I for thee layned hidden. Since into grass thou me a-glyghte; didst glide from me. Pensive, payred, I am for-pained,[25] pined away. And thou in a life of liking light bright pleasure. In Paradise-earth, of strife unstrained! untortured with strife. What wyrde hath hither my jewel vayned, destiny: carried off. And done me in this del and great danger? sorrow. Fro we in twain were towen and twayned, since: pulled: divided. I have been a joyless jeweller."
That jewel then in gemmés gente, gracious. Vered up her vyse with even gray, turned: face. Set on her crown of pearl orient, And soberly after then gan she say:
"Sir, ye have your tale myse-tente, mistaken. To say your pearl is all away, That is in coffer so comely clente clenched. As in this garden gracious gay, Herein to lenge for ever and play, abide. There mys nor mourning come never—here, where: wrong. Here was a forser for thee in faye, strong-box: faith. If thou wert a gentle jeweller.
"But jeweller gente, if thou shalt lose
Thy joy for a gem that thee was lef, had left thee. Me thinks thee put in a mad purpose, And busiest thee about a reason bref. poor object. For that thou lostest was but a rose, That flowered and failed as kynd hit gef. nature gave it. Now through kind of the chest that it gan close, nature. To a pearl of price it is put in pref;[26] And thou hast called thy wyrde a thef, doom, fate: theft. That ought of nought has made thee, clear! something of nothing. Thou blamest the bote of thy mischef: remedy: hurt. Thou art no kyndé jeweller." natural, reasonable.
When the father pours out his gladness at the sight of her, she rejoins in these words:
"I hold that jeweller little to praise
That loves well that he sees with eye;
And much to blame, and uncortoyse, uncourteous. That leves our Lord would make a lie, believes. That lelly hyghte your life to raise who truly promised. Though fortune did your flesh to die; caused. To set his words full westernays[27] That love no thing but ye it syghe! see. And that is a point of surquedrie, presumption. That each good man may evil beseem, ill become. To leve no tale be true to tryghe, trust in. But that his one skill may deme."[28]
Much conversation follows, the glorified daughter rebuking and instructing her father. He prays for a sight of the heavenly city of which she has been speaking, and she tells him to walk along the bank until he comes to a hill. In recording what he saw from the hill, he follows the description of the New Jerusalem given in the Book of the Revelation. He sees the Lamb and all his company, and with them again his lost Pearl. But it was not his prince's pleasure that he should cross the stream; for when his eyes and ears were so filled with delight that he could no longer restrain the attempt, he awoke out of his dream.
My head upon that hill was laid
There where my pearl to groundé strayed.
I wrestled and fell in great affray, fear. And sighing to myself I said, "Now all be to that prince's paye." pleasure.
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