Again in a sonnet, he evidently refers to mother-of-pearl when he says:
All night through archways of the bridged pearl. And portals of pure silver, walks the moon.
This
indiscriminate use of the gem's name to appropriate its pearly
characteristics is a common poetic license. In Ben Jonson's "Hymn to
Diana," he bids her,
Lay thy bow of pearl apart.
Sometimes
metaphor is worse mixed, as when Milton in "Paradise Lost" describes
the waters above the firmament about the gate of Heaven thus:
And underneath a bright sea flowed Of jasper, or of liquid pearl.
In
this poem of gorgeous description, the author makes several allusions
to the gem and some of them, especially those in his word paintings of
scenes in Eden, are poetically beautiful and true. One delightful to
the eye of the mind,
How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks Rolling on orient pearls and sands of gold,
and another in the description of morning in
339
