A favorite use of the sea-gem by the lighter poets is to adorn their images of physical beauty. In "Don Juan," Byron, describing one of the Turk's houris in the harem, says: Was slumbering with soft breath, And lips apart, which show'd the pearls beneath, and another poet writes similarly: Those cherries fairly do enclose Of orient pearls a double row. Shelley confines his references to pearls almost entirely to descriptions of Nature dew-bedecked, as in the "Revolt of Islam," I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled With dew from the mild streamlet's shattered wave, and another in "Prometheus Unbound" where the chorus of spirits sing: Nor aught save where some cloud of dew, Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers Of the green laurel blown anew. In "Arethusa" he uses them to enhance the idea of regal magnificence in these lines: Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearlèd thrones. The poets rarely refer to the gem as a symbol of spiritual attributes though it is peculiarly adapted by its natural qualities to illustrate purity, innocence, and other qualities of the human soul: nor is it often connected with religious ideas. Among the few, Andrew Marvell in his "Song of the Emigrants in Burmuda," avails himself of it somewhat prosaically thus, He cast (of which we rather boast) The Gospel's pearl upon our coast. One of the most poetically beautiful references ever made to the Ocean's modest jewel occurs in the "The Rosary" by Robert Cameron Rogers. The hours I spend with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over every one apart, My rosary. Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, To still a heart in absence wrung; I tell each bead unto the end, and there A cross is hung. No poet has made more frequent allusion to pearls than Thomas Moore. His poems give evidence that he had read much of them in ancient writings and was alive to their poetic value. In his description of Ireland in "Fairest! Put on Awhile," the lines— Lakes, where the pearl lies hid, And caves, where the gem is sleeping, were founded on the statements of Nennius, a British writer of the IXth century, concerning Irish pearls. In passing, it is worthy of notice that Nennius recorded also that the princes of Ireland hung them behind their ears; a fashion similar to that of Persian and Athenian youth many centuries earlier. From Cardanus, Moore learned of the ancient fable that pearls were improved by leaving them awhile with doves, and utilizes the fancy in "A Dream of Antiquity" thus: As pearls, we're told, that fondling doves Have played with, wear a smoother whiteness. An early reference to the gem is found in his "Odes of Anacreon" No. XXII: Or even those envious pearls that show So faintly round that neck of snow—