Dream Within a Dream
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?
- Edgar
Allan Poe
Analysis
Though
it is a somewhat short poem, there are still several examples of poetic devices
being used in the poem. In the 6th lines of stanza 1, it says "Yet if hope
has flown away". That is a use of personification that puts the ability to
fly to the emotion of hope. It refers to the loss of hope in life, as this was
written towards the end of Poe's life, and he was writing this as almost a
goodbye to his loved ones. In the second stanza, there is repetition in two cases.
First is when it says "While I weep- while I weep!", and the second
is the repetition of "O God!" in two lines. The use of repetition
really brings the lines to the front of the mind, causing the readers to take
note of the lines and try to take in their meaning. In the second last line
there is alliteration between the words "see" and "seem".
Alliteration is a way to cause the poem to flow smoothly, and to make the line
it appears in seem to have a heavier weighting when being read, causing readers
to take notice of it.
The
first line that stands out to the eye of the reader is "You are not wrong,
who deem That my days have been a dream;".
This line is Poe saying that he has spent much of his time in daydreams,
wondering about life and everything around him. He could also be referring to
the fact that he spent his time thinking of fantasy to get away from the
reality of his own life. The second line which stands out is "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?" This line is Poe basically asking whether loss
of hope in dreams is any different than the loss of it in the real world, and
whether people can really distinguish between them or not. Poe seems to be of
the opinion that dreams and reality are not so much disconnected as they were
thought, and that one is as powerful as the other. The third stand-out line is
the last, "Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?"
This is the summation of the poem itself, from Poe saying goodbye to his lover,
to him standing on a beach contemplating life, he wonders whether or not life
and dreams are all that different, and whether or not people can really
differentiate, and whether or not we really are all so detached from life that
all is naught but a dream itself.
-Rory O'Loghlin
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