Inklings | May Edition

    When I first saw Heidi’s May prompt for the lovely Inklings series, my inner dialogue went something like this:

    Pearls? What a delightful idea!

    What on earth will I do?

    Because May’s prompt is, as you may know (and if you don’t you’re missing out) a scene from a book or film with a pearl necklace. And except for the odd description here or there, I know of very few pearl-necklace-scenes.

    But I do know of something with a pearl. 

    A while back I obtained a book of three poems from the middle ages, including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by J.R.R. Tolkien. One of the others, aptly named Pearl, is a poem exploring a sense of deep personal loss through the metaphor of the loss of a pearl. It’s really quite profound. “Pearl is apparently an elegy on the death of a child,” Tolkien wrote. “[It is] a poem pervaded with a sense of great personal loss; but, like Gawain it is also a sophisticated and moving debate on much less tangible matters.”

     The poem begins like this:

Pearl of delight that a prince doth please
To grace in gold enclosed so clear, 
I vow that from over orient seas
Never proved I any in price her peer.
So round, so radiant ranged by these,
So fine, so smooth did her sides appear
That ever in judging gems that please
Her only alone I deemed as dear.
Alas! I lost her in garden near:
Through grass to the ground from me it shot;
I pine now oppressed by love-wound drear
For that pearl, mine own, without a spot.

    The language and metre are absolutely beautiful, and so is the subject matter. Knowing that the pearl is a metaphor for some dear person lost and never in this life recoverable makes it all the more poignant. The poem is quite long, but I’ll just provide the ending as well—which is just as, if not more, brilliant. 

To please that Prince, or be pardon shown,
May Christian good with ease design;
For day and night I have Him known
A God, a Lord, a Friend divine.
This chance I met on mound where prone
In grief for my pearl I would repine;
With Christ's sweet blessing and mine own
I then to God it did resign.
May He that in form of bread and wine
By priest upheld each day one sees,
Us inmates of His house divine
Make precious pearls Himself to please.

    As I understand it, the Prince is Christ, the Prince of Peace. Here at the end, the narrator is surrendering that terrible loss to Him, saying Thy will be done, despite how much it hurts. 

    How beautiful a message is that? And how terrifying, for the unknown is a terrifying thing. But whatever happens, we can have the confidence that the Lord is with us, no matter what, and loves us so extremely much.

    Soli Deo Gloria!

——

Namarië,

Astrya