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In the poem, "A Dream Within a Dream", The narrator seems to  lose a relationship with someone, saying "take the kiss upon the brow". He loses hope and questions reality, considering night, day, vision, and blindness equal in terms of losing hope.

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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?

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A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe | Poetry Foundation

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In the second stanza of the poem “ A Dream Within a Dream”, Poe expresses his desperation for his inevitable death. In the lines “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,” the grains of sand symbolizes the time left in Poe’s life since sand is often connected to time and because it is used in hourglasses. Sand slipping out of Poe’s hands also symbolizes how Poe feels hopeless because he cannot avoid his death. Since the poem was written when Poe was unstable due to his wife’s death and drinking, the “surf-tormented shore” could be referring to Poe’s poor mental health.

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Why is the title "Dream Within a Dream"?
What do the two "dreams" represent? What is the purpose of repeating the same two lines at the end both stanzas?

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Edgar Allan Poe refers to his life as "A Dream within a Dream", making the reader think that he believes life is a dream, but what makes him believe that life is a dream, and how does this effect his relationship between life and death?

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How does Poe's description of a missed romance support his escaping dreams and tragedies?

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What is the theme of "A Dream Within a Dream"?

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Why does Poe use the sand and ocean to symbolize his despair?

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Why does Edgar Allen Poe choose to accept with fate rather than attempt to delay it?

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How does a dream within a dream relate to the events in someone’s life?

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Why does Poe specifically choose to use the phrase "a dream within a dream" to describe/compare to a broken relationship or his own metal state?

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How does his personification in the line "yet if Hope has flown away" amplify his sorrow? What deeper meaning does it hold?

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In the first stanza, Poe seems like he’s describing love with “kiss upon the brow!” He talks about how time flies away and his lover passes, along with his hope. He’s lonely and seems like he isn’t accepting or processing the fact that his lover has passed. “In a vision, or in none, / Is it therefore the less gone?” These lines seems like he’s in despair, making himself think he’s hallucinating.

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In "A Dream Within a Dream", the author, Edgar Allan Poe uses a narrators thoughts to articulate his sorrow as an important person in his life, suddenly disappears. His use of punctuation accentuates his loving feelings for said important person, which can be seen in the first line with the exclamation point. He also asks a rhetorical question which may indicate his inability to separate fantasy from reality, to whether or not the loved person is truly gone. His use of the phrase "Is but a dream within a dream" further convinces me that the narrator is slowly becoming (what he feels like is) crazy from losing someone important to him, and he is most likely experiencing depression. He describes hope as flying away, which shows how overwhelmed he feels as something he previously had, both the person and the hope, left him quickly.

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In the poem, "A Dream Within a Dream," the author, Edgar Allan Poe, touches on themes of his own lifetime experience. In the first stanza of the poem, "Take this kids upon the brow! And, in parting from you now," seems to be pointing to a relationship with a loved one terminating, but I believe it points more to Poe's relationship with himself, and how he is not feeling like himself anymore, and is bidding goodbye to what he used to be. "You are not wrong, who deem... That my days have been a dream;" also seem to point to the fact that the narrator is dazed and possibly a bit confused as if he is walking in a dream, and can't tell reality from fantasy. "In a vision, or in none," builds on this, showing the narrator has visions. His situation could be reflecting on his depression and alcoholism, emphasizing how he feels helpless and desperate under the influence of alcohol. His thoughts and behavior seem to have been affected by his first-hand experience of trauma. "All that we see or seem... Is but a dream within a dream." further exemplifies that the narrator may be having an illusion (from causes in Poe's own life), and therefore feeling as if he is in a dream.

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In the poem, "A Dream Within a Dream", Edgar Allan Poe describes someone who he loved breaking off from his life. He begins to think his life was just a dream within a dream, how this dream did not have the joys of a regular dream and failed to meet the same experience. He becomes delusional and fails to understand life, as his hope begins to fade.  He uses night, day, vision, and blindness to show that he no longer enjoys life in all aspects. Therefore, Poe loses sight of the meaning of life, falling into tragedy after he loses someone he loved dearly.

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“A Dream Within a Dream” focuses on Edgar Allen Poe’s view of nature as impermanent. In the first stanza, Poe starts by describing his love separating from his life. Heartbroken, he believes that life is all just an illusion. Nothing concrete or tangible stays in his life forever, just like how everyone has to wake up from a dream to end it. It is clear that due to Poe’s depression regarding his final goodbye with a girl, he has reevaluated the meaning of his life. He does not know whether everything that has happened to him has been in reality or just a fantasy, which only allows the readers to assume that his love might just have been an incredible experience within Poe’s imagination.

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Does "in parting from you now" imply that Poe feels he is going to die soon?

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In the second stanza of "A Dream Within a Dream", Poe talks about his despair and depression, the grains of golden sand represent the last few moments in his life slipping away. "O God! can I not save One from the pitless wave?" talks about Poe's battle against his depression and his desperation to slow his death down and live longer. Poe also suffered from alcoholism which means he might only remember most of his life in a haze, which could also relate back to the last sentence, "Is that all we we see or seem But a dream within a dream?" wondering how much control he has over his own fate. He wonders if life is everything humans see it as or if it's just a hallucination all humans witness.

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In “Dream Within a Dream”, Edgar Allan Poe emphasizes the powerlessness of humans against nature, and he presents his naturalistic view that——Nothing gold can stay. The second stanza begins with an imagery of the narrator looking at the endlessly roaring ocean, which establishes the oppressive mood as he is exposed, helplessly, to the dangerous and merciless waves ahead. Then, as he tries to save the “golden” sand from creeping into the “deep” (that represents the ocean), he realizes that no matter how hard he tries, it is useless. The sand symbolizes the happy moments in life that he tried to grasp, but the harder he grasps, the quicker it flees. Additionally, the waves represent the forces of nature that cannot be overcome. Through the repetition of “O God!”, the narrator questions life's suffering, yet he does not receive an answer. This further reinforces that nature is oblivious. In the end, the poem ends with “Is all that we see or seem/But a dream within a dream?” This reveals that everything happened in this poem that the narrator has seen, is just a dream. The most tragic part of “Dream Within a Dream” is not how the narrator cannot save the sand, but even in his dream, he has convinced himself that anything done is useless in the face of nature. All the beautiful moments are gone after a person wakes up from the dream, but life is also a dream. The first "dream" in the title refers to the events in the poem, and the second "dream" represents Poe’s life.

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The second stanza of Edgar Allan Poe's "A Dream Within A Dream" reflects Poe's feeling of losing control. As the poem was written during a time when Poe was going in and out of reality due to alcohol. The golden grains of sand can be seen as a metaphor for the moments in his life when Poe is sure he is in control; whereas the "surf-tormented shore" is a metaphor for alcohol. Stripping away at Poe's sanity the same way the shore is washing away the grains of sand on the beach. "A dream within a dream" could be Poe, questioning if even reality is just an alcohol induced delusion, as he slowly returns to sobriety.

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The second stanza of Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Dream Within a Dream” further reflects his despair and utter hopelessness. Poe uses grains of sand and pitiless waves of the ocean as a metaphor illustrating his desperation to hold on to hope. Similar to how the sand falls from his hand into the waves, as Poe tries to hold on to his last bit of hope, he watches it slowly escape his reach, only to finally be swallowed by his tragic fate. Poe yearns for control over his future, yet he realizes that fate is uncontrollable, causing him to doubt reality. As a result, Poe questions whether his life has been a dream within another dream and wonders if his misery is just a figment of his own imagination.

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The second stanza in "A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe shows his deteriorating mental health and his slow dive into depression. He uses the waves to symbolize his fight by having the waves be his dark moments, threatening to pull him under and have him fall into depression. Similar to how waves drag can drag people into the sea, but this time it is his mental health being dragged into the sea, and subsequently, be destroyed. The sand is his last remaining touches of reality, any part of himself that wasn't dragged under already. The line "O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave?" reveals his struggle against depression and wanting to save any small part of him that wasn't dragged under yet.  His struggle to save himself became so important to him, and his depression so high, that he wonders if this is all a dream, a dream inside of his head which he made up to fill the void inside him, the void left by the woman he loved which he hinted at in stanza one. He also refers to it as "A dream Within a Dream", making the reader wonder if he thinks life is a dream of itself.

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In “A Dream Within a Dream”, Edgar Allen Poe is commenting on the misery of having such a short lifespan. The sand Poe was holding in his hand was his life. The grains of sand “creep through [his] fingers”, suggesting that his remaining time slipped away before he even knew it. When the sand was gone from his hands, he asked God why he couldn’t save the sand from the wave, or his time from death. This ties in with his alcoholism; Poe was having difficulty functioning correctly, and this poem laments at the fact that he wasted all of his time, and now, aware of his own mortality, he longed for at least another moment of his life back, so he could enjoy it to the fullest.

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In this poem "A Dream Within a Dream" in stanza two, Edgar Allan Poe is describing how he's trying to hold sand but it falls through his hands no matter how hard he tries to grasp it. He's using figurative language and expressing how no matter how hard you try to hold onto something, it may still let go. Suffering from his personal traumas, in a mental state where he is having a difficult time comprehending what was reality and what wasn't. From his eyes he sees the sand as his reality and hope, but it is washed away by a "pitiless wave". The wave symbolizes the power of fantasy drowning out his thoughts on trying to understand reality. He's left with wanting to escape this dream of fantasy, understanding the true reality of what he's been through.

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In the second stanza of "A Dream Within a Dream," Edgar Allan Poe focuses on the hopelessness of life. The poet is clearly reminiscing on a previous event of his life, and he is in deep misery. He tries to hold onto the sand in the story, representing his wife, trying to hold onto her, while next to the waves, which represent his pain. He calls out to god, and speculates if his previous happiness was just a dream within a dream. This poem was also written towards the end of Poe's life, and it shows how sad, borderline delusional he was at the end.

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The second stanza of "A Dream Within a Dream" symbolizes the inevitable death of a person. Poe wrote this piece close to his own death to reflect on his mortality and what else it is for him to see. The Golden Sand going through his hands represent the sand in a timer as it runs out of time. A timer then symbolizes the slowly ending life of Poe with nothing he can do about it other than accept it. He "stands amid the roar" referring to the time passing by to his death. "Oh god can I not grasp!" is him trying to regain control of the sand and delaying his own death. However, he is not successful which helps further push the general message that is everyone will eventually die. "Is that all we see or seem" is questioning if that is all existing in this world means, if there is anything else, and if there is what it is. With life moving by his eyes and letting him do nothing but stare, Poe compares life to a "dream within a dream" hinting at whether life is a large hallucination or not. Overall, this stanza is written with the purpose of showing the reader that our fate is not in our control, and if life is all there is to live. He does not know if what we live is genuine and at the end must accept death when it comes.

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In the second stanza, Poe seems even more upset. He sets the scene in a seemingly happy and bright place, the beach. Even though many people focus on the waves of the ocean or the beauteous horizon, Poe focuses on the negative parts of the beach. “A surf tormented shore” and “pitiless wave” he seems engrained in pessimism. After his lover is dead, he can’t see the happiness in life anymore. He compares not being able to hold the sand to losing his lover.