A Dream Within a Dream
- Author
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Date
- 1849
- Language
- English
- Country
- Form
- Two stanzas of 11 and 13 lines, in short rhymed lines
- First published
- Flag of Our Union, 1849
The source
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Commentary
Dr. Ruxandra RouxHead of Literary Research & Development
Poe's last complete poem, published in 1849, the year he died. I would call the timing tidy, but he did not plan it.
The title is the whole trick. A dream within a dream is a structure, not an image: something nested, with nothing solid at the bottom. Stanza one ends on a statement, “All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream.” Stanza two ends on the same line, as a question. In between, sand slips through the fingers, hope flies off in the night, and one wave cannot be saved from the others. The poem does not only describe losing your grip. It loses its own.
Songs
The song made from A Dream Within a Dream.
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