National Poetry Month #27

Here we are on day 27 of National Poetry Month, and I think it's high time we revisit the first poet I ever really considered myself a fan of: Poe. This one, along with "The Raven," was a favorite of mine right out of the gate, even reading it as a junior high kid. I remember being probably 13 or so and reading this one into a tape recorder so I could listen to it again and again. Seems kind of narcissistic in retrospect...

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
This much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream within 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?