e to raise money for her.(2-8) By all accounts, she would have been a great mother to Poe, despite her constant poverty. During Poe’s time with the Allans, he met Jane Standard. William Jay Jacobs stated that he “asked to call her ‘Helen’ rather than Jane-for the Greek Helen of Troy.”(25) Through Jane he was able to have a relationship that he never had with his mother. A result of their relationship is Poe’s poem “To Helen”. In 1824 Jane died suddenly of a brain tumor. He and Jane’s son, his friend, Rob sometimes went to her grave at night. This unfortunately was not Poe’s last or greatest loss. In 1829, his foster mother also fell ill. Her dying wish was that Poe could see her face one last time before she was buried, but he was too late. The buried her in the very same graveyard as Jane Standard, so once again he was there to weep. Jacobs says she “was the third woman to whom he had looked for affection only to have her taken from him by death: first his mother, then Mrs. Standard, and now the woman who had reared and protected him-Frances Allan.”(43) It was at this time that he also reworked some of his older works including “Tamerlane”, and published them in a book called Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. He had rewritten the poems to reflect more of his personal life including his losses.(47) The loss that affected Poe’s life the most was still yet to come however. He continued life as a cadet at West Point with limited or no contact with John Allan. After he left to pursue other goals he never spoke to Allan again. He was editor of several magazines, but either quit or was fired from all of them. Then he met the love of his life, his fourteen-year-old cousin Virginia. They lived happily for only a short time before Virginia’s health began failing. As Virginia became more and more ill, so did Edgar. It was as if...
