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THE PEARL
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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:
All sorts of Fame sit cheek-by-jowl, Pearls in that string—the Table d'Hote.
Few later writers have set the pearl in as wide
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