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Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com A Dream Within a Dream POEM TEXT THEMES 1 Take this kiss upon the brow! REALITY, ILLUSION, AND CONTROL 2 And, in parting from you now, The poem explores the idea that reality is an illusion. 3 Thus much let me avow — The speaker asks if all life—everything that “we 4 You are not wrong, who deem see”—is just a “dream within a dream.” The speaker might be 5 That my days have been a dream; thinking of reality in the most literal sense here—as in, people are basically living in the Matrix—but also could be thinking 6 Yet if hope has flown waa y about the subtler idea of objectivity. That is, perhaps the 7 In a night, or in a day, speaker is suggesting that people are doomed to view the 8 In a vision, or in none, world through the prism of their own perceptions and 9 Is it therefore the less gone? experiences. In this sense, the poem may be questioning if it’s 10 All that we see or seem ever possible to know the objective “reality” of anything at all. 11 Is but a dream within a dream. And because the world is ultimately unknowable, the poem implies, people aren’t really in control of their own fates. 12 I stand amid the roar The poem begins with the speaker saying goodbye to someone, 13 Of a surf-tormented shore, implied to be a lover. This other person has said that the 14 And I hold within my hand speaker’s “days have been a dream,” and the speaker agrees. It’s 15 Grains of the golden sand — not clear if this is meant in a positive sense—as in, this 16 How few! yet how they creep relationship has been really great and dreamy—or in the sense 17 Through my fingers to the deep, that the relationship, and the speaker’s life itself, is not in line 18 While I weep — while I weep! with how things actually are; that is, the speaker has been living in a sort of fantasy world. Either way, the lover’s comments and 19 O God! Can I not grasp the pain of saying goodbye lead the speaker to express a kind of 20 Them with a tighter clasp? hopelessness, rooted in doubt about the nature of reality and 21 O God! can I not save control. Indeed, perhaps this doubt stems from the way that 22 One from the pitiless wave? something like love can seem so certain before, one day, it’s 23 Is all that we see or seem suddenly gone. 24 But a dream within a dream? The speaker then introduces another layer of unreality: the speaker claims that all of life is not just a dream, but a dream within a dream. The speaker is anxious about lacking control over the world, so much so that the speaker isn't even sure if SUMMARY they're living in their own dream, or if the speaker's world is just I'll kiss you on the forehead to say goodbye. Now that I'm part of someone or something else’s wider dream! Maybe the leaving, let me say this: you weren't wrong to say that I have speaker is talking about being a dream in the mind of some been living in a dream. But what does it matter? I've lost all greater being, God perhaps. This is supported by the appeals to hope, so whether it is night or day, whether life is a vision or God in the second stanza—though these could just be figures of nothing of the sort, would that make me feel any less hopeless? speech, as the speaker grows increasingly distraught (“O Everything that we perceive is nothing but a dream within a God!”). Either way, reality is presented as a kind of illusion—not dream. necessarily in the sense that people are being actively deceived, but that there is no way of knowing for sure what is real. And, I stand on the coast, hearing the deafening sound of the surf as either way, the poem implies that this means people are not it pounds on the shore. And I grasp at grains of golden sand. really in control of their lives. Even with just a few grains in my hand, they seem to escape my grip and fall back into the water, while I cry and cry. Dear God, The second stanza then finds the speaker suddenly alone. can't I hold onto the sand more firmly? Dear God, can't I save a Standing on a beach, the speaker tries to confirm the reality of single grain from the water? Is everything we perceive really just the world by grasping at the sand—yet this sand keeps slipping a dream within a dream? through the speaker’s fingers. The constantly shifting shoreline ©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 1 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com also seems to speak to the speaker’s lack of certainty and many. However, this ambiguity feeds into the poem's central control. The speaker wants to find something solid to hold onto, idea: that reality is one some level fundamentally illusory or but is faced only with relentless and ongoing change. unknowable. To that end, there is something child-like and Finally, to intensify this sense of doubt and uncertainty, the wondrous about the alliteration across lines 4 and 5: poem restates its earlier claim—that life is just “a dream within a dream”—as a question. That is, even the speaker’s strongly You are not wrong, who deem held intuition about the unreliability of knowledge is uncertain That my days have been a dream; too! All in all, then, this amounts to an argument that human life is built on the shakiest of foundations—and perhaps that the These /d/ sounds are playful, almost like trickery—like the kind nature of reality is beyond the limit of human understanding. of stuff the Mad Hatter might speak in Alice in Wonderland. At this point, it's also not known if the idea put forward in these lines is meant (viewing life as a kind of dream come Where this theme appears in the poem: positively true) or in the sense of life being a kind of illusion. There's also • Lines 1-24 the possibility of a sort of in between interpretation—that this means the speaker has been living in a sort of fantasy world, not really understanding the reality of the relationship with this LINE-BY-LINE ANALYSIS unknown addressee. LINES 6-11 LINES 1-5 Yet if hope has flown waa y Take this kiss upon the brow! In a night, or in a day, And, in parting from you now, In a vision, or in none, Thus much let me avow — Is it therefore the less You are not wrong, who deem gone That my days have been a dream; ? "A Dream Within a Dream" poem opens with a kiss, which the All speaker gives to an unspecified addressee. It's a kiss "upon the that we see or seem brow," so it isn't necessarily a romantic kiss—but that does seem Is but a dream within a dream. the most likely scenario given what follows. In other words, the Lines 6 to 9 represent the speaker's response to the notion speaker is probably talking to a lover. The gentle consonance that the speaker's "days have been a dream" (a phrase leveled and assonance of the line convey the affection of the kiss: at the speaker by the unspecified "You" of line 4). Essentially, the speaker expresses a kind of hopelessness—"hope has flown Take this kiss upon the brow! away"—and then wonders whether it actually makes a difference if the speaker lives in a dream or not. It could be It's an interesting opening to a poem because it happens "night" or "day," and life could be a "vision" or not—the feeling of without any attempt to establish a for the kiss—it just context lost hope would be the same, the speaker says. happens. There is a sense of urgency, then, and perhaps even desperation. This is confirmed yb lines 2 and 3, which reveal Again, the poem is steeped in ambiguity, not giving the reader that the speaker is "parting" from the addressee—and in fact is any sense of what this hope is, nor how or why it has "gone." doing so right "now." These lines suggest that the rest of the Maybe the speaker's lover has just ended the stanza will be the speaker's words of goodbye—the words that relationship—hence the "parting" taking place—and the the speaker feels most need to be said given that these two speaker is thus devastated, and would be devastated even if the people are having to go their separate ways (though, again, the relationship wasn't as great or solid as the speaker had initially circumstances of this are not clear). thought (that is, if the speaker had been living in a "dream" in the sense of not being in tune with the reality of this Following the dash at the end of line 3, the speaker offers up relationship). some parting words—which themselves are a response to something that the addressee has evidently said before. "You That's definitely not certain though! In any case, the are not wrong," says the speaker, in other words confirming enjambment after "away" gives the line a quickening pace that the addressee was correct to say the following: that the suggestive of flight, and the anaphora/diacope of the repeated speaker's "days have been a dream." It's worth taking note of "in" suggests both a troubled mind and the speaker's point that the vagueness of this scenario—there is no sense of who the the circumstances around this hopelessness are not all that speaker is meant to be, nor the identity of the addressee.
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