A Dream Within a Dream
by Edgar Allan Poe
Story copied from the Wikisource.
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?
— THE END —
For Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes. And Barbara with infinite love as I falter on the road to Ithaka.
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A Dream within a Dream is currently in the Public Domain. This text can now be legally distributed as the work was published before 1923 and the author died in 1849 therefore the 70 year extension has expired. |