518. Tell her that “sweet is pleasure after pain;”[[94]] tell her, too, of the exquisite happiness and joy she will feel as soon as the labor is over, as perhaps the greatest thrill of delight a woman ever experiences in this world is when her babe is first born. She, as if by magic, forgets all the sorrow and suffering she has endured. “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.”[[95]] Keble, in the Christian Year, well observes:
“Mysterious to all thought,
A mother’s prime of bliss,
When to her eager lips is brought
Her infant’s thrilling kiss.”
Rogers, too, in referring to this interesting event, sweetly sings:
“The hour arrives, the moment wished and feared;
The child is born, by many a pang endeared!
And now the mother’s ear has caught his cry—
Oh! grant the cherub to her asking eye!