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?

The poem “A Dream Within A Dream” by Edgar Allan talks about how the poet feels that his life has been as unreal as a dream. It reflects his despair at watching the important moments and events of life slip through his fingers like “golden sand” and yet he is not being able to stop them as they fall into the waves of time and go into the past. Throughout the poem the mood is that of despair and the tone is melancholic. The poet extensively uses visual imagery and onomatopoeia which greatly helps us to view the poem alongside in our minds eye. Apart from this, repetition, exclamation and symbolism to lay emphasis on his despair at watching everything precious to him pass him by. The main themes of the poem are loss, despair and frustration. These feelings are expressed in both stanzas of the poem equally.

The poet, at the beginning of the poem, bids farewell to a loved one for the last time before she passed away as is shown by the “kiss upon the brow”. In my opinion, Poe was referring to his wife, who was suffering from tuberculosis when this poem was written. He started to regard his life as a dream, an illusion of his mind as by each moment that passed him by, life seemed more unreal to him. He wanted to wake up to oblivion, the real world, the final end of everyone and everything. He explored the possibility that there could be no hope left to bring back his beloved and this realization dawned upon him by surprise as he did not realize when all hope was lost (“In a night or in a day; In a vision or in none.”). It was then that he understood that life has no definition and is only a mere reflection of how each individual perceives it. He thus regarded his own life an illusion resulting from his minds perception and the moments that he had lived and loved were nothing more than a mirage that existed as a part of the delusion he termed as life.

In the second stanza, it is clear that his wife has passed away, and that he his lamenting his loss. His life seems as if it is a “surf tormented shore” which shows that his life is chaotic and harsh without his beloved. The moments he spent with her, the moments he cherished, are fleeting and seem to be slipping out of his hands like grains of sand. He refers to them as few, as the two of them weren’t together for as long as he would have liked and that she was leaving him too early. He tries to hold on to them but they continue to fall. This causes him immense pain and he weeps. The line “While I weep” is repeated twice to express his lamentation and feeling of loss and sorrow. The grains of sand fall into the waves of time and take his wife with it in the form of death, which is a natural attribute of time. The grains slipping from his fingers also symbolize an hourglass which is clocking the time and has taken his wife with it while the poet could not stop the time from passing by. The repetition of “Oh God!” shows his desperation for saving his wife as he begs god so spare his wife’s life, “to save one from the pitiless wave”.  The final lines of the poem, “all that we see or seem” seems to question everything that is real and if the possibility of saving his wife is so unreachable and unrealistic that it is considered a dream.

Throughout the poem we see varied use of poetic devices. The poet uses visual imagery to a great extent. This along with onomatopoeia helps to paint a mind painting of the scene of the poem. Imagery is found in the lines “surf tormented shore” and “grains of golden sand…they creep” while onomatopoeia is found in the line “I stand amid the roar”.  Repetition and exclamation provide emphasis on his sorrow and grief in the lines, “While I weep” which is repeated and “Oh God! Can I not grasp”, which shows exclamation and is repeated. Symbolism is a striking feature in the poem. The “kiss upon the brow” symbolizes parting forever, the “grains of golden sand” symbolize the wonderful moments spent by the poet and his wife and the “pitiless waves” are time and death. Another striking feature of the poem is its couplets and triplets which display a rhyme scheme and give the poem a rhythmic touch.

In conclusion, I would like to say that throughout the poem, Poe deals with the fact that when life becomes unrealistic, man begins to question his existence as a whole. He displays grief and loss to a very high level. This piece of writing was written in the final year of his life and also leads towards the fact that he himself was about to wake up from his dream and leave his dream of a life behind to embrace the reality of oblivion.