It seems coming down from the greater to the less when, leaving for a moment the teaching of the Bible about the glory and responsibility of motherhood, I open another book and quote a few words from the writings of a high-souled poetess, one who without knowing the glory, the bliss, the responsibility of hearing a child call her mother, has yet grasped, in a higher degree than any other writer I know, the reality of all these things.
It was fitting to place first of all the testimony of Bible history and teaching on the value of a child and the glories and responsibilities of motherhood. But in these days it will do us good to read some words from one of Mrs. Browning’s poems and to find that along with her great mental and poetic powers, there dwelt in her fragile frame the warmest of motherly hearts, the strongest motherly instincts. As Aurora Leigh, she writes—
“I might have been a common woman now,
And happier, less known and less left alone;
Perhaps a better woman after all,
With chubby children hanging on my neck
To keep me low and wise. Ah me, the vines
That bear such fruit are proud to stoop with it:
The palm stands upright in a realm of sand.
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