For the next poem, I wanted to read something by Edgar Allan Poe. Rather than take on “The Raven,” I chose one of his shorter poems, “A Dream Within a Dream.”
I began with the poem on its own, before reading about its history or the different forms it took during Poe’s life.
The poem
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?
First reading
What a vividly sad poem. This is not one of Poe’s poems I had read before, and I had not expected it to be so intensely sad.
For whatever reason, the poems I seem to have chosen have had poignant twists of sadness. This one caught me off guard. It was striking enough to bring tears to my eyes.
Hearing it
I listened to Tom O’Bedlam read the poem. His deep, sonorous voice does the poem justice. It softens the intensity of the first stanza for me while keeping all the weight and gravitas of the second.
What I learned
What surprised me most was how long Poe lived with this idea. An early version appeared in a poem called “Imitation” in his 1827 collection. He rewrote it as “To ——” a couple of years later, then returned to it again near the end of his life.
By early 1849, the shore, sand and waves existed as a poem on their own. Poe sent that version to Annie Richmond under the title “For Annie.” He later added the opening farewell and published the complete poem as “A Dream Within a Dream” in the Boston newspaper Flag of Our Union on March 31, 1849. He died a little over six months later.
The title “For Annie” makes a biographical reading tempting. So does the YouTube video’s description, which links the poem to the death of Poe’s wife, Virginia. But the final poem does not identify the person being left, and the surviving history does not prove that Virginia is its subject. I would rather leave the farewell open than force a name onto it.
The first printing also capitalizes “Hope.” It is a tiny choice, but it makes Hope feel almost like a presence that can leave of its own accord, rather than simply a feeling the speaker has lost.
Rereading it
I still read this as a touching farewell to someone Poe cared about deeply. The fact that it does not belong neatly to one identifiable person or moment gives it even more weight for me. Poe returned to it and perhaps reshaped it around another parting.
It feels less like a eulogy fixed to one loss and more like a poem he could return to when he needed to capture grief again. I find that even more touching.
The line or image I kept thinking about
It is the helplessness of trying to hold on to the grains of sand as they slip from his grasp. He holds tighter and weeps, but still cannot save even one from the waves. I cannot imagine reading those lines without feeling my eyes sting too.