English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
| |
| 759. To My Mother |
| | | Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) |
| |
| |
| BECAUSE I feel that, in the Heavens above, | |
| The angels, whispering to one another, | |
| Can find, among their burning terms of love, | |
| None so devotional as that of ‘Mother,’ | |
| Therefore by that dear name I long have called you— | 5 |
| You who are more than mother unto me, | |
| And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you, | |
| In setting my Virginia’s spirit free. | |
| My mother—my own mother, who died early, | |
| Was but the mother of myself; but you | 10 |
| Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, | |
| And thus are dearer than the mother I knew | |
| By that infinity with which my wife | |
| Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life. | |
| |
|
|
|
