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?

This poem struck me because of the dream theme. Dreams have always interested me, and it surprised me to know that in the early 1800's it was a popular enough topic to include in poetry. I also find the message of the poem interesting, how he is saying that his entire life has all  been just a dream. I also like how the first stanza and the second stanza have different settings, but they still somehow work together in the same poem, because of the couplet rhyming scheme.

Literary Devices:

Meter: Trochaic Trimeter and Tetrameter (three feet and four feet)

Personification: "Yet if hope has flown away" (line 6) "Yet how they creep" (line 16)

giving hope a lifelike quality of flying, giving sand the ability to creep

Onomatopoeia: "Avow" (line 3)