The Pearl, Hymn 2: Born of the Sea Without Seed

What are you like? Let your stillness speak to one who listens; speak with us with your silent mouth. For whoever hears the stammerings of your silence, to him your type utters its silent cry about our Redeemer. Your mother is a virgin of the sea. Though he did not take her as his wife, she fell into his bosom; though he did not know her, she conceived you near him. You who are a type, rebuke the Jewish women who wear you hanging on them. Of all forms you alone are an offspring like the Word on high, whom alone the Most High begot. The engraved forms seem to be the type of created things above. This visible offspring of the invisible womb is a type of great things. Your lovely conception was without seed; your pure begetting was without marriage; and your single birth was without brothers. Our Lord had brothers and yet no brothers, since he was the only Son. O solitary one, exact type of the only Son! There is a type of you in the crown of kings, where you have brothers and sisters. Fine gems are your brothers, with beryls and large pearls as your companions. Let gold be your kinsman, as it were; let there be a crown for the King of kings from your beloved ones! When you came up from the sea, that living tomb, you cried out, “Let me have a fine gathering of brothers, relatives and kinsmen!” As the wheat is in the stalk, so you are in the crown with princes. And it is a just restoration to you, as of a pledge, that from that depth you should be raised to a fine eminence. The stalk carries wheat in the field; the head of the king carries you about on his chariot. O daughter of the water, who have left the sea where you were born and have gone up to the dry land where you are loved! For people have loved you and seized you and adorned themselves with you, just as they did with that Offspring whom the Gentiles loved and with whom they crowned themselves. It is by the mystery of truth that Leviathan is trampled down by mortals: the divers strip him off and put on Christ. In the sacrament of oil the apostles stole you away and came up. They snatched their souls from his mouth, bitter as it was. Your nature is like a silent lamb in its sweetness. If anyone is to take hold of it, he lifts it by its ears in the shape of a cross, as it was on Golgotha. He cast out all his gleams abundantly on those who looked at him. [a]

In your beauty is foreshadowed the beauty of the Son, who clothed himself with suffering when the nails passed through him. The awl passed through you because they handled you roughly, as they did his hands. And because he suffered he reigned, just as your beauty grew by your sufferings. If they showed you no pity, neither did they love you; yet suffer as you might, you have come to reign! Simon Peter showed pity on the Rock. Whoever strikes it is himself overcome by it. It is because of its suffering that its beauty has adorned the height and the depth. [e]