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Poe's Poetry

Poems of Later Life: 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?


1849.