A Dream Within A Dream

Edgar Allen Poe

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?
The speaker in Edgar Allen Poes poem, A Dream Within A Dream, demonstrates how
seeing life in a different perspective can change the entire human experience. The
speaker of the poem is contemplating weather life is just one big allusion: All that we
see or seem / is but a dream within a dream(Poe 8-9) . The Speaker is demonstrating
how although humans may feel as though life is real it may just be all an allusion and life
is whatever you want it to be. Dreams are whatever you want them to be or whatever
you subconsciously desire and this is a metaphor for life. Life is your dream you can make
it what you want so whos to say that our lives arent just, but a dream within a dream?
(22).