A Dream Within a Dream

W

hen I was young my father read us bedtime stories while we were on vacation. One year he chose the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. My mother was not particularly pleased, but that summer’s choice of bedtime stories launched deep within me a love of classic literature, especially the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

And so, as a launching point for the weekend, I share with you Edgar Allan Poe’s A Dream Within a Dream:

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?