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?
Footnotes
My favourite lines are from the second stanza where the poet asks God why he can’t grasp the grains of sand, no matter how tight he holds. Read more here for the explanation of the poem.