“Gillyflower”. It’s a type of carnation, usually known as “clove pink”.

Alas, I lost her in a garden;

The pearl’s loss sets up the central tension of the poem, which up until now has been more about the pearl than about the narrator. Now, the narrator begins to tell his own story, separated from the pearl at the poem’s heart. In this respect the poem’s a sort of restoration poem, in which a key balance is upset with the hope of its being restored by the final lines.

Will he find the pearl? Tune in next week to find out …

The poem opens with its title: “Pearl”.

As with many medieval poems, Pearl wasn’t originally given a title: it’s just in a manuscript as is, with a few pretty pictures before the poem starts. The title it was given makes sense, though. The pearl is the central image of the poem, and as Pearl is an allegory the pearl itself has been interpreted as representing all sorts of things, including, as in Matthew 13:44, the Kingdom of God:

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

A King Charles Spaniel:

Made famous by King Charles II of England, before the Royal Family discovered corgies, it’s usually been associated with the aristocracy. Here, then, it’s a symbol of the class divide which separates Maud’s family from the narrator.

Plus, it’s snarling. Even the dog is disdainful of Maud’s would-be lover.

He’ll be able to give out punishments…

Flowers are a central image in Maud. A rose is the traditional flower of love, so this section – a celebratory lovesong – takes the rose as its emblem, using metaphor to associate it with parts of her body. It’s a nod to Shakey’s Sonnet 130, where a woman’s body is itemised in a parody. In Maud, though, the narrator doesn’t get the joke: he’s spurting clichés with no regard for the reality of his situation, nor for the danger waiting just around the corner …

This is a financial speculation. The narrator’s dad had invested loads o' money in a business that had then gone bankrupt. Tennyson doesn’t tell us what that business was, although since a lot of people lost money investing in the Railway in the 1840s and ‘50s then it could have been that.

Should’ve listened to the Dragons.

Tennyson’s son Hallam said:

my father would say that in calling heath “blood”-red the hero showed his extravagant fancy, which is already on the road to madness.

(The narrator later goes mad.)