The Gawain Poet - Pearl (Coulton translation)

A companion piece to From Jerusalem to Revelations in the Librivox catalogue (https://librivox.org/jerusalem-to-revelations-a-quartet-of-spiritual-explorations-by-unknown/). Pearl, believed to have been written by the author of the Pagano-Christian beheading tale, Gawain and the Green Knight, enters the vision of a grieving father at his daughter's graveside that carries him with us into the spirit world in which she finds her dwelling place now, a pure unspotted girl, her father's pride, now a Pearl of great price and her Saviour's bride. She chides him, much (as many have noted) Beatrice does Dante in his Divine Comedy with the plain and incontrovertible fact that she now lives in the New Jerusalem in the rapture of eternal bliss, while he is wholly wrapped in his desire to be again with her. The disconnect that must exist between this wholly human feeling, a paternal grief. against the vividly described reality of a spiritual universe that she inhabits now and her perpetual happiness as Bride of the Lamb, makes for much of the quiet humour and gentle pathos of the piece. ( Tony Addison)