Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1931

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Casket

The history of the burial casket shows an evolution from the simple pine box to elaborate constructions of rare wood, precious metals, and silk linings. The speaker in “Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls” conjures the image of a coffin that would put the ancient Egyptians to shame. It is made of silver and “cool with pearls” (Line 1). It is encrusted with “red corundum” (Line 2)—rubies—“or with blue” (Line 2) —sapphires. Pearls, rubies, and sapphires occur organically in nature. They are mined and harvested for their beauty and rarity and are given value by people. In this poem, the love of “other girls” (Line 3) is enshrined like the dead in elaborate caskets, such as the one the speaker proposes, and hidden. For all the embellishment, the casket remains a reliquary, a place for the dead, whose ebullience cannot even be admired once it’s in the ground. The speaker refuses the box and chooses, instead, the simple pleasures nature has to offer and that nature alone can construct—a yellow cowslip and a skirtful of ripe apples. These living things will also die, eventually. However, uninterred and unadorned, they will have the chance to grow and ripen to their full potential, as can she.

Gemstones

Minerals in the earth compress and form colored crystals of aluminum oxide that human beings have deemed precious. Precious, too, are the layered orbs of calcium carbonate produced by friction within the tissue of a living mollusk, otherwise known as pearls. Difficult to procure and refine, these products of the earth command a high price and so are available only to those who can afford the expense. The rarity of a thing is one of the factors that makes it valuable in an economic market. To lock one’s love away in a box covered in gemstones and pearls would be making a statement about that love’s value: Not only is that love deemed worthy of an expensive vessel, but it is also a prized rarity unto itself. Only someone who can afford it may have access.

That the speaker refuses to contain or present her love in an elaborately decorated coffin suggests that she considers her love a living thing, and not only living but beautiful and valuable without ornament. The gemstones themselves seem wasted, their light and color a pointless addition to something that will never see the light.

Cowslips

The cowslip is possibly one of the humblest flowers to be found in nature. A relative of the primrose, cowslips proliferate in meadows and in woodland areas. Its petals are the color of egg yolk, and its name (one of many) derives from cow dung patties. They bloom in early spring and are a sunny harbinger of warmer weather. They can be found clumped together, and, theoretically, would provide temptation for someone wanting to, in the spur of the moment, collect of hatful of cheery wildflowers. The cowslips, in their simple beauty, provide a refreshing contrast to the overwrought casket with its overly cultivated accoutrement. One can imagine a few of the blossoms flying out the hat as it swings, trailing through the air on a breeze before falling to the grass. The cowslip represents nature at its most natural—abundant, cyclical, ephemeral, and lovely.