This is not appetite, hunger, desire. Desire may lead to it, and usefully. Desire is the torchbearer, Motherhood is the Way.
Give Baby Love his due. He is not evil; he is good. He is a joy forever. He is vitally necessary in the scheme of things. Happy are they who in the real great work of life can carry with them this angel visitant, fluttering free along their path, now close and sweet, now smiling mischievously at a distance, yet returning ever.
But with all that can be said of him he is out of place as chief deity in this high temple. Let a little shrine be made at the gate outside the door. Let him smile there and take his tribute of red roses. But when we put the shoes from off our feet and enter, we should see before us, tall and grave, glorious in strong beauty, majestic in her amplitude of power, the Goddess Motherhood.
Such love should shine from her deep eyes that children would crowd to that temple and feel at home; learning to understand a little of what had brought them there. Such beauty in this body of great womanhood that men would worship as for long they have worshipped her of Melos. Such high pride that girls, gazing, would feel strong to meet and bear their splendid task. And such power—such living, overmastering power that man, woman and child alike should bow in honor and rise in strength.
Then will Love be truly worshipped.
ARREARS
Our gratitude goes up in smoke,
In incense smoke of prayer;
We thank the Underlying Love,
The Overarching Care—
We do not thank the living men
Who make our lives so fair.
For long insolvent centuries
We have been clothed and fed,
By the spared captive, spared for once,
By inches slain instead;
He gave his service and is gone;
Unthanked, unpaid, and dead.
His labor built the world we love;
Our highest flights to-day
Rest on the service of the past,
Which we can never pay;
A long repudiated debt
Blackens our upward way.
Our fingers owed his fathers dead—
Disgrace beyond repair!
No late remorse, no new-found shame
Can save our honor there:
But we can now begin to pay
The starved and stunted heir!