07/08/15
Poetry essay
ENG4U-42
A Dream within a Dream
By Edgar Allen 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? Analysis
My initial glance through this poem I realise that the poet is not really talking about a dream. He compares life metaphorically to a dream within a dream. The structure of this poem is not a standard rhyming pattern which halts the reader in order to absorb what is being said. The poem consists of nine couplets and two triplets. The opening stanza, for example, begins with a triplet, then shifts to couplets and the second stanza shifts from couplets to triplet in the middle then shifts back to the original pattern.
The poem expresses the poet’s frustration of the uncertainty and temporariness of life and people. He compares life and dreams because when we dream, it seems so real but when we are awakened by the roar of life we realise that it was just a figment of our thoughts. This poem is extremely emotional as it begins with a sad farewell to an unknown loved one. The atmosphere is inherently disturbed when the author tells this person that his whole life was nothing but just dream. He attempts to tell us that the world we live in is perceptive and other than that it would not exist as though we have just