Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls

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.