To my Mother by Edgar Allan Poe — Read

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 --

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 / 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.