August's gemstone of the month, the peridot, is under represented in my jewelry box, but I did find a couple of pieces to share...so to the deck!
It can’t be summer, --that got through;
It’s early yet for spring;
There’s that long town of white to cross
Before the blackbirds sing.
It can’t be dying,-- it’s too rouge,--
The dead shall go in white.
So sunset shuts my question down
With clasps of chrysolite.
~Emily Dickinson
So summer may not be quite "got through," but I am definitely ready for Ms. Dickinson's "rouge" season. Especially when I go into one of my favorite stores (Homegoods) and they are already getting their fall/Halloween stuff out! Also, I'm ready for an end to the heat and humidity!
As for the tie in of that poem to today's post, chrysolite (and olivine for that matter) have both been used as names for peridots in literature and history. Peridot has particularly interesting lore--when set it gold, it dispels the "terrors of the night." In fact, "the belief in the virtue of the peridot to dissolve enchantments and put evil spirits to flight was probably due to the association of the stone with the sun, before whose life giving rays darkness and all the powers of darkness were driven away." The Curious Lore of Precious Stones: Being a Description of their Sentiments, by George Frederick Kuntz, 1913.
Where time is drowned in odour-laden winds
And Druid moons, and murmuring of boughs,
And sleepy boughs, and boughs where apples made
Of opal and ruby and pale chrysolite
Awake unsleeping fires; and wove seven strings,
Sweet with all music...
And Druid moons, and murmuring of boughs,
And sleepy boughs, and boughs where apples made
Of opal and ruby and pale chrysolite
Awake unsleeping fires; and wove seven strings,
Sweet with all music...
The Shadowy Waters: The Harp of Aengus
~Yeats
