Because I feel that, in the Heaven’s above,
The Angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None as devotional as that of “Mother”,
Therefore by that clear name I’ve called you,

You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you.

In setting my patriotic 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 strife
Was hated by my soul with its soul-life.