Thread: Edgar Allan Poe
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Old 01-04-2007, 04:03 PM   #19
Mir
 
Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 3,360
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?

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I really like this one by Poe. Would anyone like to share what they think this is about? I see it as something I can interpret in two completely dissimilar ways and was wondering, which way you guys were leaning as to its meaning.

What I think;

a)

Not being able to save someone from drowning (metaphorically or physically) seems to me, an apparent interpretation but I don't quite see it that way.

I.e Drowning in the sea. A physical view.
I.e Drowning in fits of gloom. A metaphorical view.

b)

Life is a dream, an illusion, and we but live, in a dream within a dream.

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