A Dream Within A Dream

 A Dream Within A Dream

By 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?

I, too, have said goodbye and wondered: was any of this real? I can't feel you anymore. Where are you? Have I lost you forever? Were you ever mine?

The lover bids farewell to his beloved, calm, composed; a kiss on the forehead and he is gone, his words laden with quiet grief. In a flash, he is standing by the sea. There is nothing for him now but wind and waves, and in his fingers, the remnants of the unkeepable.