In "By the Fireside" however, Browning creates a rain of pearls, a truer figure than pearly raindrops: Break the rosary in a pearly rain, And gather what we let fall. The metaphors of Lowell are more true to the nature of the pearl and its characteristics than those of many poets. One, seldom used though most appropriate, occurs in "The First Snow Fall." And the poorest twig on the elm-tree Was ridged inch deep with pearl. Another instance of combined truth and poetry may be found in "An Invitation": A cloud Byzantium newly born, With flickering spires and dome of pearl. And in "Pictures from Appledore" the same poet in the embodiment of a delightful idea in words says of the moon: Rather to call it the canoe Hollowed out of a single pearl. In these illustrations, imagination is true to nature on either hand, for the beady ridges of the half melted or frozen snow on the tree twigs, the soft luster of a white cloud dome and the pale round moon, alike are characterized by beauties which are pearly. In his more involved metaphor the same nice avoidance of incongruity is noticeable. Though raindrops are not pearly, the white fringe of a shore-driven wave is, which he notes in "Sea-Weed": For the same wave that rims the Carib shore With momentary brede of pearl and gold. There is a hint of Cleopatra and Sir Thomas Gresham in his lines "To H. W. L." Let them drink molten pearls nor dream the cost; and in the lines from "Memoria Positum" there is an understanding of the processes by which the gem grows: This death hath far choicer ends Than slowly to impearl in hearts of friends; and in the poetic fancy in "A Familiar Epistle to a Friend"— Old sorrows crystallized into pearls. Nor does he omit the time-honored custom of poets to place the gem among the chief jewels of the great and in the mouth of beauty, for in "The Singing Leaves" he makes the King's eldest daughter ask of her royal father when he journeys: O, bring me pearls and diamonds great, and in "A Fable for Critics" he says: Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom girl, With lips like a cherry and teeth like a pearl. Bryant does not often allude to pearls, but in two instances, both in "The Flood of Years," they appear in beautiful setting. In the first: A beam like that of moonlight turns the spray To glistening pearls. Later on, describing the ocean of the past, he sees— Dim glimmerings of lost jewels, far within The sleeping waters, diamond, sardonyx, Ruby and topaz, pearl and chrysolite. The general use of pearls in the barbaric splendor of the great in the days of Rome and Egypt and Persia, appears in Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered." In the wizard's dwelling: Nor failed there urns of crystal, pearl, and gold, and, High on the Soldan's helm, in scales of pearl A rampant dragon grinn'd malignant things; and also,