Phyllis McGinley

Meek-eyed parents hasten down the ramps </br> To greet their offspring, terrible from camps.

Wifehood, the house, a family; they are woman’s traditional concern and each in its way represents one of the other great three—faith, hope, charity—which St. Paul sets down as the virtues of earth. (For how can one rear a family without faith? Or build a roof without hope? Or remain a proper wife without charity?) They are life’s vital elements and no ordered world can endure without them.

Ah, snug lie those that slumber </br> Beneath Conviction’s roof. </br> Their floors are sturdy lumber, </br> Their windows weatherproof. </br> But I sleep cold forever, </br> And cold sleep all my kind, </br> For I was born to shiver </br> In the draft from an open mind.

Ah! some love Paris, </br> And some, Purdue. </br> But love is an archer with a low I.Q. </br> A bold, bad bowman, and innocent of pity. </br> So I'm in love with </br> New York City.

Prince, I warn you, under the rose, </br> Time is the thief you cannot banish. </br> These are my daughters, I suppose. </br> But where in the world did the children vanish?

Always on Monday morning the Press reports </br> God as revealed to His vicars in various guises— </br> Benevolent, stormy, patient, or out of sorts. </br> But only God knows which God God recognizes.

A mother's hardest to forgive. </br> Life is the fruit she longs to hand you </br> Ripe on a plate. And while you live, </br> Relentlessly she understands you.

Compromise? Of course we compromise. But compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy and Spruce Manor the pleasant place it is.

Men may be allowed romanticism; women, who can create life in their own bodies, dare not indulge in it.

Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but passé. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every other brave aspect of the human soul.

I’ll read as I please—a spot of science fiction, a taste of Jane Austen. Mark Twain and Keats and Agatha Christie shall sit cheek by jowl on my night table. And I’ll make it a point of honor to finish no book I’m not enjoying, also to skip as much and as often as I like. If I want to peek to see how a novel comes out, I’ll feel perfectly justified. I’ll go to Plato when I’m in the mood and the newest thriller when I’m not. For again, the little vices bring relaxation; and a bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides that necessary roughage in the literary diet.

The kitchen will not come into its own again until it ceases to be a status symbol and becomes again a workshop. It may be pastel. It may be ginghamed as to curtains and shining with copper like a picture in a woman's magazine. But you and I will know it chiefly by its fragrances and its clutter. At the back of the stove will sit a soup kettle, gently bubbling, one into which every day are popped leftover bones and vegetables to make stock for sauces or soup for the family. Carrots and leeks will sprawl on counters, greens in a basket. There will be something sweet-smelling twirling in a bowl and something savory baking in the oven. Cabinet doors will gape ajar and colored surfaces are likely to be littered with salt and pepper and flour and herbs and cheesecloth and pot holders and long-handled forks. It won't be neat. It won't even look efficient. but when you enter it you will feel the pulse of life throbbing from every corner. The heart of the home will have begun once again to beat.

Gossip isn’t scandal and it’s not merely malicious. It’s chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.

The other day I chanced to meet </br> An angry man upon the street— </br> A man of wrath, a man of war, </br> A man who truculently bore </br> Over his shoulder, like a lance, </br> A banner labeled "Tolerance."