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
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?

Author

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EDGAR ALLEN POE was born in Boston, January 19, 1809, and after a tempestuous life of forty years, he died in the city of Baltimore,
October 7, 1849.
His father, the son of a distinguished officer in the Revolutionary army, was educated for the law, but having married the beautiful
English actress, Elizabeth Arnold, he abandoned law, and in company with his wife, led a wandering life on the stage. The two died
within a short time of each other, leaving three children entirely destitute. Edgar, the second son, a bright, beautiful boy, was
adopted by John Allen, a wealthy citizen of Richmond. Allen, having no children of his own, became very much attached to Edgar,
and used his wealth freely in educating the boy. At the age of seven he was sent to school at Stoke Newington, near London, where
he remained for six years. During the next three years he studied under private tutors, at the residence of the Allen's in Richmond.
In 1826 he entered the University of Virginia, where he remained less than a year.
After a year or two of fruitless life at home, a cadetship was obtained for him at West Point. He was soon tried by court-martial and
expelled from school because he drank to excess and neglected his studies. Thus ended his school days.
In 1829 he published "Al Aaraaf, and Minor Poems." "This work," says his biographer, Mr. Stoddard, "was not a remarkable
production for a young gentleman of twenty." Poe himself was ashamed of the volume.
After his stormy school life, he returned to Richmond, where he was kindly received by Mr. Allen. Poe's conduct was such that Mr.
Allen was obliged to turn him out of doors, and, dying soon after, he made no mention of Poe in his will.
Now wholly thrown upon his own resources, he took up literature as a profession, but in this he failed to gain a living. He enlisted as
a private soldier, but was soon recognized as the West Point cadet and a discharge procured.
In 1833 Poe won two prizes of $100 each for a tale in prose, and for a poem. John P. Kennedy, one of the committee who made the

award, now gave him means of support, and secured employment for him as editor of the "Southern Literary Messenger" at
Richmond. After a short but successful editorial work on "The Messenger," his old habits returned, he quarreled with his publishers
and was dismissed. While in Richmond he married his cousin, Virginia Clem, and in January, 1837, removed to New York. Here he
gained a poor support by writing for periodicals.
His literary work may be summed up as follows: In 1838 appeared a fiction entitled "The Narrative of Arthur Gorden Pym;" 1839,
editor of Burton's "Gentleman's Magazine," Philadelphia; next, editor of "Graham's Magazine;" 1840, "Tales of the Grotesque and
Arabesque," in two volumes; 1845, "The Raven," published by the "American Review;" then sub-editor of the "Mirror" under
employment of N. P. Willis and Geo. P. Norris; next associate editor of the "Broadway Journal."
His wife died in 1848. His poverty was now such that the press made appeals to the public for his support.
In 1848 he published "Eureka, a Prose Poem."
He went to Richmond in 1849, where he was engaged to a lady of considerable fortune. In October he started for New York to
arrange for the wedding, but at Baltimore he met some of his former boon companions, and spent the night in drinking. In the
morning he was found in a state of delirium, and died in a few hours.
The most remarkable of his tales are "The Gold Bug," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," "The
Purloined Letter," "A Descent into Maelstrom," and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar." "The Raven" and "The Bells" alone would
make the name of Poe immortal. The teachers of Baltimore placed a monument over his grave in 1875.
Poe has been severely censured by many writers for his wild and stormy life, but we notice that Ingram and some other prominent
authors claim that he has been willfully slandered and that many of the charges brought against him are not true. His ungovernable
temper and high spirit led him into disputes with his friends, hence he was not enabled to hold any one position for a great length of
time. Like Byron and Burns, he had faults in personal life, but his ungovernable passions are sleeping, while the sad strains of "The
Raven," the clear and harmonious tones of "The Bells," and the powerful images of his fancy live in the immortal literature of his
time.

About poem
Summary:
The narrator kisses the listener in parting. He tells the listener that he agrees that his
life has been a dream, but he suggests that everything "is but a dream within a
dream." He stands on the shore of the ocean, holding grains of sand as he cries. He
cannot keep the sand from running out of his hand, and he wonders if he cannot
save even one grain from the surf.
Analysis:
The structure of "A Dream Within a Dream" consists of two stanzas containing two
disparate but ultimately connected scenes. The first stanza shows the first-person
point of view of the narrator parting from a lover, while the second places the
narrator on a beach while futilely attempting to grasp a handful of sand in his hand.
The juxtaposed scenes contrast in a number of ways, as the poem moves from a
calm, though solemn, farewell to a more passionate second half. Whereas the first
stanza features a thoughtful agreement, the seashore scene contains expletives
such as "O God!" and anguished exclamations along with despairing rhetorical
questions to reflect the torment in the narrator's soul.
Despite the apparent differences between the two stanzas, they are linked through
the ironic similarity of their evanescent natures. In the first image, the narrator is

leaving his lover, indicating a sense of finality (and mortality) to their love.
Accordingly, the falling grains of sand in the second stanza recall the image of an
hourglass, which in turn represents the passage of time. As the sand flows away
until all time has passed, the lovers' time also disappears, and the sand and the
romance each turn into impressions from a dream. Through the alliteration in "grains
of the golden sand," Poe emphasizes the "golden" or desired nature of both the
sand and of love, but he shows clearly that neither is permanently attainable.
Like many of Poe's poems, "A Dream Within a Dream" uses the sea as a setting for
a discussion of death and decay. "The City in the Sea" illustrates the imagery of a
pitiless sea most clearly, with the Gothic allusions to the end of time, and in "A
Dream Within a Dream", the "surf-tormented shore" becomes a second metaphor for
time, as the waters of the sea slowly but inexorably pound away at the physical
existence of the shore. The narrator regards the wave as "pitiless," but he further
associates himself with the temporal nature of the water by weeping in tandem with
the falling of the sand.
Although the two stanzas are not identical in length, their similar use of an iambic
rhythm and of couplets and triplets in their end rhyme scheme creates a pattern that
matches the parallel of their ideas. In particular, the refrain lines "All that we see or
seem/Is but a dream within a dream" unite the passages in the poem's conclusion of
futility and regret at the movement of time. Poe draws attention to "all that we see or
seem" with alliteration, and we can view this phrase as the combination of two
aspects of reality, where "all that we see" is the external and "all that we seem" is the
internal element. By asserting that both sides are the also alliterative phrase "a
dream within a dream," Poe suggests that neither is more real than a dream.
As the title, the phrase "a dream within a dream" has a special significance to any
interpretations of the poem. Poe takes the idea of a daydream and twists it so that
the narrator's perception of reality occurs at two degrees of detachment away from
reality. Consequently, this reality reflects upon itself through the dream medium, and
the narrator can no longer distinguish causality in his perception. By showing the
narrator's distress at his observations, Poe magnifies the risks of uncertainty and of
the potential changes to his identity. Time is a powerful but mysterious force that
promotes cognitive dissonance between the protagonist's self and his abilities of
comprehension, and the daydream proves to have ensnared him. Alternatively, the
poem itself may be viewed as the outermost dream, where the inner dream is
merely a function of the narrator's mind.

Author works
1
2 The Raven
3 Romance
4 Song
5 Alone
6 Annabel Lee
7 Eldorado
8 The Bells
9 Lenore
10 The City In The Sea
11 To Helen 1
12 An Enigma
13 For Annie
14 Sonnet - To Science
15 To My Mother
16 Bridal Ballad
17 A Dream
18 Dreams
19 Spirits Of The Dead
20 A Valentine
21 Dreamland
22 Evening Star
23 The Haunted Palace
24 The Sleeper
25 To One In Paradise
26 Fairy-Land
27 The Happiest Day, The Happiest Hour
28 To One Departed
29 The Valley Of Unrest
30 Sonnet- Silence
31 In Youth I have Known One
32 Imitation
33 Elizabeth
34 The Lake
35 The Conqueror Worm
36 Al Aaraaf
37 Serenade
38 In the Greenest of our Valleys
39 Tamerlane
40 Hymn
41 Stanzas
42 The Forest Reverie
43 Israfel
44 The Coliseum
45 To Helen 2
46 Sancta Maria
47 Eulalie
48 Sonnet- To Zante
49 To M.L.S.
50 Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius

A Dream Within A Dream

Author quotes
A gentleman with a pug nose is a contradiction in terms."
"A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this - that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their deathbeds can be made - not to understand - but to feel - as crime."
"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
"Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears."
"I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it."
"I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only
more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago."
"I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens,
listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death
of Meleager."
"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat."
"In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me."
"In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure
because it is excessively discussed."
"It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a
dream."
"Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so."
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary."
"Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words."
"That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward."
"That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the
contemplation of the beautiful."
"The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for
success in all these more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind."
"The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led."
"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be."
"There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think,
one of the few."
"There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent
occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man."
"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night."
"To be thoroughly conversant with a man's heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair."
"To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness."
"We loved with a love that was more than love."
"Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through
the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'"
"With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion."