A Dream Within a Dream
By: Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
5 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?
10 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
15 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
20 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?
Poe's form in this poem is open. His rhyming does not have a strict pattern, the two stanzas have a different number of lines and his line lengths are not eqaul. Though it is an open fromed poem, Poe creates a sense of unity with rhyming and repetition. "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream" in lines 10 and 11 being repeated with only two words different in lines 23 and 24, "Is all that we seem or seem but a dream within a dre
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
5 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?
10 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
15 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
20 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?
Poe's form in this poem is open. His rhyming does not have a strict pattern, the two stanzas have a different number of lines and his line lengths are not eqaul. Though it is an open fromed poem, Poe creates a sense of unity with rhyming and repetition. "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream" in lines 10 and 11 being repeated with only two words different in lines 23 and 24, "Is all that we seem or seem but a dream within a dre