Tales of mystery and imagination

F

or my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words with even more distinctness than that which I conceived it. There is, however, a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which as yet I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt to language. These fancies arise in the soul—alas, how rarely—only at epochs of most intense tranquility when the bodily and mental health are in perfection. And at those mere points of time where the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams.

And so I captured this fancy... where all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

A Dream Within a Dream

—Edgar Allan 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?