A_Dream_Within_a_Dream

A Dream Within a Dream

A Dream Within a Dream

Poem by Edgar Allan Poe

For the vivid dream experience about awakening from sleep, see False awakening.

"A Dream Within a Dream" is a poem written by American poet Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1849. The poem has 24 lines, divided into two stanzas.

Quick Facts First published in, Publication date ...
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM.

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?

Reading of the poem "A Dream Within a Dream"

Analysis

The poem dramatizes the confusion felt by the narrator as he watches the important things in life slip away.[1] Realizing he cannot hold on to even one grain of sand, he is led to his final question whether all things are just a dream.[2]

It has been suggested that the "golden sand" referenced in the 15th line signifies that which is to be found in an hourglass, consequently time itself.[3] Another interpretation holds that the expression evokes an image derived from the 1848 finding of gold in California.[1] The latter interpretation seems unlikely, however, given the presence of the four, almost identical, lines describing the sand in another poem "To ——," which is regarded as a blueprint for "A Dream Within a Dream" and preceding its publication by two decades.[3]

Publication history

The poem was first published in the March 31, 1849, edition of the Boston-based story paper The Flag of Our Union.[2] The same publication had only two weeks before first published Poe's short story "Hop-Frog." The next month, owner Frederick Gleason announced it could no longer pay for whatever articles or poems it published.

Adaptations

References

  1. [1]
    Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. p. 402 ISBN 0-06-092331-8
  2. [2]
    Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 2001: 73. ISBN 0-8160-4161-X
  3. [3]
    Poe, E. A. (1969). Poems Collected in 1829. In T. O. Mabbott (Ed.), Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume I: Poems (pp. 130). Massachusetts: Belknap Press.
  4. [4]
    XElvikingoX. "The Yardbirds - Dream Within A Dream". Archived from the original on December 14, 2021. Retrieved February 9, 2019 – via YouTube.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article A_Dream_Within_a_Dream, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.