frequently lifted into the region of imaginative literature by the
author's power of graphic description. "Sir Gawayne and the Green
Knight" is a priceless contribution to Arthurian story. "The Pearl,"
though it takes the form of symbolic narrative, is essentially lyric
and elegiac, the lament, it would seem, of a father for a little,
long-lost daughter.

The present translation of "The Pearl" was begun with no larger design
than that of turning a few passages into modern English, by way of
illustrating to a group of students engaged in reading the original,
the possibility of preserving intricate stanzaic form, and something
of alliteration, without an entire sacrifice of poetic beauty. The
experiment was persisted in because its problems are such as baffle
and fascinate a translator, and the finished version is offered not
merely to students of Middle English but to college classes in the
history of English literature, and to non-academic readers.

If "The Pearl" presented no greater obstacle to a modern reader than
is offered by Chaucer's English, a translation might be a gratuitous
task, but the Northwest-Midland dialect of the poem is, in fact,
incomparably more difficult than the diction of Chaucer, more
difficult even than that of Langland. The meaning of many passages
remains obscure, and a translator is often forced to choose what seems
the least dubious among doubtful readings.

The poem in the original passes frequently from imaginative beauty to
conversational commonplace, from deep feeling to didactic aphorism or
theological dogma, and it has been my endeavor faithfully to interpret
these variations of matter and of style, sometimes substituting modern
colloquialisms for such as are obsolete, or in other ways paraphrasing