In Praise of the Midnight Pearl

Come midnight dark and in her jewel clumped Set her bright Iskin's blackness to better shine By being darker than your darkened lump Where no distinction common eyes can find. For my pearl is not white, nor grey nor blue And absorbs all light, nothing passes through She is the universe of my glad heart And to me alone her virtues impart Fountains of milk for fevered tongue to sip Out of her blackness honeycombs do drip And when on her sweetness the moonlight spills The midnight pearl reveals its sudden charm Light drips from it, a milk mature and warm In which heaven all its passion distills Midnight Pearl by David Smalling