
Bibliographic Information
The Pearl
Original Source
See witness list.
Witness List
-
Witness w: Williams MS. Jones B62
-
Witness b: Bodleian MS. Tanner 307
-
Witness p: The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, first edition
(Cambridge, 1633)
Electronic Edition Information:
Responsibility Statement:
- Transcribed, encoded, and edited by Robert Whalen
- Sponsored by Northern Michigan University and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Funding provided by Northern Michigan University and the National Endowment for the Humanities
Publication Details:
Published by Robert Whalen for demonstration purposes only. May not be reproduced without
permission..
Encoding Principles
"The Pearl" is part of a comprehensive edition of George Herbert's English verse, The Digital Temple. This larger project includes
computer-readable transcriptions, in both original- and modern-spelling versions, of
Williams MS. Jones B62, Bodleian MS. Tanner 307, and a copy of The
Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations, first edition (Cambridge,
1633); high-resolution digital images of the sources (excepting the Latin verse in
Williams); an apparatus that includes critical, textual, and technical introductions
and annotations; and a user interface with which to navigate these materials.
Transcriptions are encoded in TEI(P5)-conformant XML.
Currently, only the Williams images and transcriptions are captured directly from the
source. Images (where available) and transcriptions of the Bodleian MS. and first
edition are captured from Scolar black-and-white facsimiles.
Apparent errors are preserved and editorial corrections provided using SIC and
CORR tags, but only where the editor conjectures that the original scribe or
compositor would have recognized the instance as an error. For example, what
according to modern usage is incorrect subject/verb agreement might have been
deemed acceptable to a seventeenth-century scribe or compositor. All such
instances are treated instead using the ORIG and REG tags. (See below.)
Original spellings, abbreviations, and orthography are preserved and
regularizations provided. Where in the manuscripts a character's status as
majuscule or miniscule is ambiguous, the editor has silently chosen one or the
other based on context and judgment (i.e., does not register such ambiguity in
either the markup or the notes).
Original quotation marks, if any, are preserved.
Original hyphenation is preserved.

Textual Notes
Note: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly
pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that
he had, and bought it" (Matthew 13:45-46). Elaborating this passage from the
Sermon on the Mount, the poem reviews wistfully even while denouncing much of
what is positive in worldly experience: the pleasures of intellect, social
distinction, and the flesh.
Line number 2
Note: Lines 1-2: The
Head/head
and
Pipes/pipes can be read as both mechanical
components of the printing press and the human head and its channels through
which experience enters the mind via the eyes and ears and, transformed into
knowledge, exits via the mouth (speech being counterpart to the printed
word). This opening metaphor immediately establishes the tone of the poem by
suggesting that much of human knowledge is but a mechanistic response to
sensory stimuli—knowledge which
reason/reaſon hath from Nature/nature (line 3).
Line number 5
Note: Lines 4-5, or … Policie/policie:
Reason, like a resourceful housewife who makes due with the materials at her
immediate disposal, is self-sufficient with respect to the knowledge and
practice of law and politics.
conspire/conſpire: combine harmoniously (
OED 3.a).
Line number 6
Note: "What is immediately apparent, what revealed by fire," the latter
referring perhaps to some alchemical or occult process through which
nature's secrets are exposed.
Line number 8
Note: The abundance of knowledge already acquired, and how it came to be (i.e.,
philology).
Line number 9
Note: keyes: i.e., means and methods with which to
unlock nature's secrets (see line 6 and note).
Line number 12
Note: "The courtier's skill in lively banter."
Line number 13
Note: "Which of two courtiers wins favour in a contest of deference to a person
of rank."
Line number 16
Note: tru/true-love/loue-knot: ornamental knot used as a
symbol of true love.
Line number 17
Note: Lines 15-17: "When the desire for fame and
reputation at court is evident in subtle physical gestures and glances: a
wooing of the world as though it were a mistress—a pretence
which, like a burdensome load, must always be sustained."
Line number 18
Note: drams/drammes: small amounts (
OED 3.b).
spirit/ſpirit: mental
vigor, courage (
OED 13.a); vital bodily fluid (
OED 16.a); distilled alcohol (
OED 21).
Line number 19
Note: Lines 18-19: The speaker bemoans the considerable
energy it takes to sustain worldly respectability, wryly suggesting that
such effort can be mustered at all only with a little fortifying courage
from the bottle.
Line number 21
Note: strains/straines/ſtrains: passages of song or verse
(
OED 13.b); sexual exertions.
w
Line number 22
Note: gustos: keen enjoyments
(
OED 2).
Line number 22
Note: lullings/Lullings: soothing songs (
OED 1.b); soothing caresses (
OED lull, v.1, 1).
relishes/rellishes/reliſhes: pleasing flavours or qualities
(
OED 1.d); and, as Wilcox (325) notes, musical
embellishments (
OED relish, n.3).
Line number 23
Note: propositions/propoſitions: schemes or courses of action (
OED 2.a).
Line number 25
Note: Lines 24-25: "What are the major cultural
achievements inspired by love from Classical antiquity to the
present."
w
Line number 26
Note: their: i.e.,
loue's and
witt's.
b p
Line number 26
Note: vnbundled/unbridled: Whereas the #b version
means merely unpacked or released, the #p revision means unrestrained or
undisciplined (as of a horse without a bridle).
w
Line number 27
Note: smacks: agreeable flavours (
OED 1.c).
dainties: choice viands (
OED 6).
their exaltation:
the elation they cause (
OED 2.b).
w
Line number 28
Note: stops: ventages or apertures on the tube of a
wind instrument (
OED 15.a).
pegs: tuning pegs of a stringed instrument (
OED 2.a).
w
Line number 29
Note: "The pleasures of society or solitary
reflection."
b p
Line number 29
Note: Lines 27-29: "I am made of flesh and my five
senses complain often that they are restrained by Reason even though
outnumbering him five to one."
Line number 31
Note: have/haue them in my hand: i.e., by virtue of
having written this poem.
Line number 35
Note: Lines 32-35: Using a cold, mercantile language of
exchange, the speaker arrogantly presumes to comprehend the extent of the
sacrifice required to follow Christ. Worse yet, he fails utterly to
comprehend the extent of Christ's sacrifice relative to his own.
Line number 36
Note: "The speaker even claims to be able to anticipate changes in
circumstances and to understand how they will affect the agreement" (Wilcox,
326).
Line number 37
Note: labyrinths/labarinths: mazes, recalling the story
of Theseus and the Minotaur in Ovid's
Metamorphoses
(8.130ff.). After slaying the beast, Theseus finds his way out of the
labyrinth by means of Ariadne's thread (the latter suggested here by the
silk twist/twiſt in the following line).
groueling/groveling witt/wit: This sudden assertion
that the poem to this point has been merely obsequious seems entirely at
odds with the arrogance of the lines (32-36) immediately preceding. The
crucial question is whether the acknowledgement of such folly has
sufficiently corrected it. But perhaps that is the point: nothing the
speaker says or does can redeem him. The poem's conclusion is the moment
before the
clime/climbe (line 40) has even
begun.
Line number 38
Note: silk-/silk/ſilk
twist/twiſt: In addition to the echo of Ovid (see line 37 and note),
Wilcox (326-27) cites three possible interpretations of this much-discussed
phrase: an echo of Jacob's ladder linking heaven and earth (Genesis 28:12);
the proverbial "threefold cord" that "is not quickly broken" (Ecclesiastes
3:12) and therefore a type of the Trinity; and a passage in Calvin's
Institutes (1.6.3) in which the "twist" of God's Word
is said to lead the Christian to salvation.
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