Read "A Dream Within a Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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?