by Edgar Allan Poe
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.
Poe is the master of horror and this poem, written not to his biological mother but to his aunt Maria, remind us that he had other sides as all human beings.
In a letter this is the way he describes poetry:
A poem, in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having, for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having for its object an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting perceptible images with definite, poetry with indefinite sensations, to which end music is anessential , since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness.Hard to believe these are Poe's ideas. I did choose this poem, published in 1949, for the Mother's day because in our days we have many different kinds of families and the mother is not always the woman who gives birth.
Those who loved and were loved by their mothers, the way it was possible and not the ideal and stereotyped image of a always giving mother, whoever this mother was don't have a void in their hearts. Happy mother's day.
