Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls

“Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls” concerns itself with romantic love, a subject often explored in sonnet form. However, Edna St. Vincent Millay introduces her subject with an image that many would consider highly unromantic—a casket. In addition, the speaker begins in the negative, announcing how things won’t be, and therefore establishing a kind of authority. It is a “silver casket” (Line 1). The metallic nature of the material lowers the heat before the reader even arrives at the “cool pearls” (Line 1). Even with the further embellishment of rubies and sapphires—“red corundum or with blue” (Line 2), the container is useless, “(l)ocked” (Line 3) as it is and with “the key withheld” (Line3). The speaker will not be the keeper of such a safe, beautiful though it may be, and the choice of “other girls” (Line 3), who, unlike the speaker, keep their precious love in reserve and safely out of reach.

Though the “lovers’-knot” (Line 5) and a “ring” (Line 5) often signify commitment, the speaker views these symbols as trappings. To her, these things are constructed to enforce a coerced faithfulness—“Semper fidelis” (Line 7), Latin for aways faithful, and a motto for the US Marines, as well as other martial entities. The speaker suggests that the “legend plain” (Line 6) spelled out in the restrictive symbology of knots and rings demands a fidelity to the idea of fidelity, which in turn plants a seed of discontent, “(k)ernels a drop of mischief for the brain” (Line 8). While this is a poem about love, the speaker here, has positioned the reader in the brain. A bound and sequestered love that is held at bay is not a thing of the heart but a cold and calculated construction, devoid of passion.

The turn, in poetry, is a place where the perspective, and often the message, shifts. The so-called “problem” or proposal of the sonnet often shifts or turns after the eighth line. This is the case in “Not In A Casket Cool With Pearls,” as the speaker introduces the antithesis of locked-away love: “Love in the open hand, no thing but that” (Line 9). Far from the silvered coffin encrusted with gemstones, love, in this line, resides in the flesh. That the hand is open indicates that the love is not only accessible but fully exposed to the world and elements around it. It is enough by itself, “(u)ngemmed” (Line 10), without adornment or artifice. Not only is this a love that lives out in the open, but it is a love that has its own ethos: It wishes “not to hurt” (Line 10). The speaker does not say it won’t hurt, only that it is without malevolent intent. This free love does not mean to manipulate an outcome or enact an agreement; it is not entering into litigation. If someone gets hurt, the speaker implies, the pain would be a natural consequence of feeling—the price of love, but not a price set by the love itself or the speaker.

At this point in the poem, living nature provides the imagery and sets the tone. The speaker compares her brand of love to the offering of a hatful of wildflowers. “(C)owslips” (Line 11) are flowers that bloom in proliferation together, common to hay meadows and wooded areas. The humble plant, harvested so casually, is a far remove from the image of the cool and cultivated pearl, arguably no less a wild and natural object. The hat which carries the flowers is “(s)wung from the hand” (Line 12). The gesture is loose and easy. In the swinging, some of the flowers may fall from the hat with no consequence. The speaker’s love can be compared as well to the gathering of “apples in her skirt” (Line 12). Though likely misidentified, the apple is nonetheless the symbol of the fall in the Garden of Eden, the offering from the tree of knowledge that Eve gives to Adam. This moment of generosity is the act that provokes their exile from Paradise. In “Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls,” however, the apples are, at least at this point, a simple and wholesome fruit, charmingly transported. The speaker makes her offering with an exuberance she compares to childhood delight, innocent of all machinations and interested only in delight itself. The moment of giving, for the speaker, is both spontaneous and complete: “And these are all for you” (Line 14). She gives everything she has to her beloved, without reservation. Her treasure, however, is perishable by nature. If she did not give them over, the apples would rot on the ground. In this light, the speaker’s generosity is total but temporal. Flowers will wilt and apples will decay, but they are fragrant and fresh and glorious in their moment, as is the love the speaker has for her beloved.