Motherly Love
Motherly love is many things in the poem. First, it is literally sustaining. The nautilus shell is constructed by the mother for her eggs to grow; they cannot live without her and she does everything she can to protect them. Second, the love is warm and safe and unconditional; the eggs are taken care of and here they will experience the most love in their lives. Third, the love is somewhat obsessive. The mother is "watchful" to the extent that "she scarcely / eats until the eggs are hatched." She buries them "eightfold in her eight / arms" and covers them. The eggs are "intensively / watched" while they are in the "fortress" in which "the arms had / wound themselves."
The Fragility of Life
The obsessiveness of the mother's care for her eggs is a testament to the fragility of life. She looks on the shell as a "perishable / souvenir of hope," knowing that it might not make it. It is "thin glass" and thus extremely fragile. The eggs within are threatened like Hercules was by the hydra and the crab, and outside the "fortress" of the shell everything is dangerous. The mother knows that while the eggs are in there she must do everything in her power to keep them alive, even avoiding eating while they slumber. Moore clearly demonstrates that a mother's love sometimes seems overbearing because it stems from her desire to protect her offspring at all costs.
