BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
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?
This poem is good and the last part reminds me of the movie Inception. The poem is really descriptive and it makes the reader think alot about it.
ReplyDeleteThis poem reminds me of the movie inception. It just really makes you think of what is really real and what is the real world. What if we are in a dream right now.
ReplyDeletewe are...
ReplyDeletea dream within a dream....
probably limbo
I picked this poem because it reminded me of the move Inception. I really enjoyed the movie even though it was a mind boggler. This peom parrallels the movie in so many ways, Poe is wondering if our lives are real, or if they are only dreams inside of dreams. I kind of wonder the same thing sometimes, because after watching Inception you can't help but wonder if our lives are really dreams. Poe's dispared langue portrays his sense of uneasyness and wonder. This is a really neat poem that keeps you on you guessing, I like it.
ReplyDeleteGoing off of everyone's idea, this is the poem form of the movie Inception. At the end of both works it makes you wonder: "are we awake or are we really dreaming?" The second time I read this it seems almost like Poe is in a daze and has spent his life dreaming, like he's been sleepwalking through life. Lines 19-24 suggest that he's beginning to lose something or someone very important to him. He's fighting, trying to figure out anything he can do to save 'them'.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Nighthawk that this movie reminds me of inception, and it makes me wonder if the director got his ideas from this poem by Edgar Allan Poe. On a deeper level, I feel that the mood of the second stanza is a person in despair. My sense of this mood is depicted from the narrator saying, "can I not save
ReplyDeleteOne from the pitiless wave?" This desperate pessimistic outlook on life portrays the belief that no one can be saved from the forces out of our control.
As we all can agree, inception is based off this idea that there is a dream with inside of a dream. Even though the movie takes the dreams a little too far, Poe keeps it simple. I like in this poem how Poe is trying to grasp reality. By saying, "O God! Can I not grasp / Them with a tighter clasp" Poe is demonstrating his intense confusion on wither he is in the real world or in his dream, and of course we know he is inside a dream.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with most of the other comments that this poem reminds me of the movie "Inception" just because the title is "A Dream Within A Dream" but I do not completely agree with Sneezing Panda that "Inception" is based completely off this poem.
ReplyDeleteAside from that Edgar Allen Poe uses multiple examples of imagery such as:brow, shore, hand, sand, wave, and fingers. Upon observing this, I have also seen that this poem is not anything like his more famous pieces.
The quote that really stuck out to me was "And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand" implying that the speaker might be "paused" in time or dreaming.
Much like the concept of a dream within a dream and the movie inception, this poem can get confusing for me... from what i take from it the speaker in the poem feels the same way. His "weeping" and exclamation of "Oh God! Can I not grasp them with a tighter clasp" seems as though the speaker is frustrated with his lack of understanding of what is happening. It seems as though he is frustrated because he cannot figure out what is happening either.
ReplyDelete