poem

A Dream Within a Dream, Nov 1, 2026

Edgar Allan Poe

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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?

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📖 About this poem

Poe wrote this poem near the end of his life, and it reads like a farewell wrapped in a question. The speaker kisses someone goodbye, then spirals into wondering whether anything he's lived through was ever real at all. The first stanza stays in the head, turning the idea over almost like an argument. The second drops into the body, standing on a beach, watching sand slip through his fingers no matter how tightly he grips. That image does all the work: hope, memory, people we love, time itself, all of it running out between our hands no matter how hard we try to hold on. The short, insistent rhymes and that repeated question at the end give it a kind of undertow, pulling you along like the waves it describes. It lands today because everyone eventually stands on that same shore, watching something precious go, wondering if grasping harder would even help.