§ 22. We can hardly meet with a prettier token and illustration of affection than is to be found upon an ancient silver ring. It has a pelican feeding three young ones from the life-current oozing out of her breast; with the words: Their Mother. There is but little doubt that this was one of three rings given by a mother to her three children. The pelican is made an emblem of charity; and Hackluyt, in his Voyages, speaks of the “Pellicane”—“which is fain to be the lovingst bird that is, which rather than her young should want, will spare her heart-blood.” In no form or fashion could a mother’s love have been more beautifully and permanently displayed—pure as the metal, perfect as the emblem. It makes us feel that love is indestructible; that it came from Heaven and returns thither. No matter what may have been the sorrows, the cares and the long-suffering of that mother; no matter though her heart dances no longer to the music of her children’s voices; no matter what were the earthly trials of those loved children; no matter though their home-nest has been torn down or that the snow of the world covers where the wings of the parent bird were spread; no matter though the grave has taken all, save this illustration of a divine emanation:—we feel that such love could not die and the throbbing from the poet’s soul comes upon our memory:
“Oh when the mother meets on high
The babe she lost——
Hath she not then, for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrows, all her tears,
An overpayment of delight!”[372]
§ 23. This love between mother and child, from its undying purity, is always a pleasant thing to trace and to follow. In the Household Words,[373] a work in which there is more of usefulness, pleasure and beauty than in any other modern book, a ring plays a pretty part in a ballad of the youthful knight, Bran of Brittany. He was “wounded sore,” and “in a dungeon tower, helpless he wept in the foeman’s power.”
“O find a messenger true to me,
To bear me a letter across the sea.