Page 20 - DENG202_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_III

Unit 2: A Dream within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

O God! Can I not grasp Notes
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?

2.8 Explanation

Published in 1849 A Dream within a Dream, is a conversation poem. It is a farewell poem to a
beloved and in concurrence with their assertion. The poet assents that reality we see or seem has
been a dream. Those memories with his beloved were joyful for the poet is sad and grieving as
he weeps and weeps for the passing of those memories or dreams to time. The “pitiless waves”
is an analogy for the cruel passage of time (22). The question, “was our time together a reality or
dream … hopes flies, night turns to day, visions become none, and sand creeps? The poet
inquires God to interfere, “O God! Can I not save (21)/‘One’ from the pitiless waves?” (22) The
passageway of dreams is portrayed as fierce, “a surf-tormented shore” (13), and it makes the
poet “weep” (18). The lost dreams are compared to “grains of golden sand” (15) whereas the
“dream within a dream” are memories as is seen or seems. The dream as it seems is internal for
the poet, while the dream as he sees is external.

The poet inquiries the reality of what he sees in the night or the day, vision or none: are those
sights a dream since what he saw has passed? He questions the reality of what seems to be when
the surf crashes along the shore, the grains of sand slips through his fingers: are those a dream
since what seems has passed? The last question posed—“Is all” that we see or seem (23)/But a
dream within a dream?” (24) His concerns—are what he sees realities, and are what it seems
realities, or both a fantasy within a fantasy. The poet wants to keep the memories as reality but
with the passage of time, as specified by the waves and golden sand, what ones sees and seems
is a fleeting dream.

2.9 Analysis

The structure of A Dream within a Dream contains of two stanzas having two unrelated but
eventually connected scenes. The first stanza shows the first-person’s opinion of the narrator
separating from a lover, while at the second places the narrator on a beach while uselessly
trying to clasp a handful of sand in his hand. The juxtaposed scenes contrast in a number of ways,
as the poem moves from a tranquil, though sincere, farewell to a more passionate second half.
While the first stanza features a considerate agreement, the seashore scene includes swearwords
such as “O God!” and tormented exclamations along with hopeless rhetorical questions to
reveal the suffering in the narrator’s soul.
In spite of the apparent dissimilarities between the two stanzas, they are connected through the
ironic resemblance of their evanescent natures. In the first image, the narrator is separating
from his lover, representing a sense of definiteness (and mortality) to their love. Consequently,
the falling grains of sand in the second stanza recollect the image of an hourglass that in turn
signifies the passage of time. As the sand flows away until all time has passed, the lovers’ time
also vanishes, and the romance and the sand each turn into effects from a dream. With the help
of the alliteration in “grains of the golden sand,” Poe highlights the “golden” or desired nature
of both the sand and of love, but he portrays evidently that neither is permanently achievable.
Like several of Poe’s poems, A Dream within a Dream uses the sea as a setting for a discussion of
death and decay. The City in the Sea illustrates the imagery of a pitiless sea most clearly, with the
Gothic allusions to the end of time, and in A Dream within a Dream, the “surf-tormented shore”

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