Imitation #1: Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream

Joel Milian

                                                                                      A Dream Within A Dream

by Edgar Allan Poe
(published 1850)

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?

Critique

This poem by Edgar Allan Poe is about an individual leaving a lover and how he believes life may be a dream because he cannot hold on to the moment. The poem is centered on two main situations. The first being the narrator with his lover, and the second sees the narrator at a beach unable to maintain sand that he clutches in his hands. I believe the poem is a critique because the narrator is unable to tell between reality and dreams. The Rhyme Scheme for the first stanza of this poem is AAABBCCDDBB, and the second stanza is EEFFGGGHHIIBB. There are a few literary devices in this poem such as Assonance and Alliteration when Poe repeats “is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream.” There is also repetition in the second stanza when the narrator says, “While I weep – while I weep.” Personification is also present when Poe says “Yet if hope has flown away.” A final literary device is onomatopoeia in the first stanza with the word avow.