Tynan Portillo presents…featuring the best horror stories of the 19th century…welcome to The Poe Show podcast. Narrated by Tynan Portillo.

Today’s episode, A Dream Within a Dream 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?

Hello from The Poe Show, as always I am your humble host Tynan Portillo. If you enjoy Edgar Allan Poe’s work and classic literature then leave this podcast a good rating and share it with others who love this kind of content. And if you have any questions about an episode, then click the “Send us a text message” link to send and anonymous message straight to the podcast.

 This is gonna be a shorter episode since this was a shorter poem, but so many of us hear that phrase, “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream,” and I thought we should discuss it.

 This poem was published in 1849 in the paper The Flag of Our Union. Poe actually died in the same year. It’s a poem that, like The Conqueror Worm, asks the question of what truly matters in this life. But unlike The Conqueror Worm, this poem asks the question and leaves the answer up to the reader.

We start with the line “Take this kiss upon the brow” and the narrator says they are parting from someone. The narrator also concedes to the notion that “my days have been a dream.” And in whatever manner they left the narrator, does it make the days less gone. Then it ends with a firm statement of “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” Seems like that should actually be the end of the poem because it’s so final. But as the narrator holds golden sand creeping through their fingers while they weep, they ask if they cannot grasp them tighter. And this seemingly frantic gesture ends the poem with the question, “IS all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?”

Now a possible interpretation of this poem could be that the narrator is either dying themself or is watching someone else die. In any case, they are parting ways. The sands that slip from the speaker’s fingers are most likely the sands of time and someone’s time is running out. The reason I says it could be the narrator or someone the narrator knows is because the narrator kisses someone’s brow and parts from them now, which is obviously a parting gift of affection but usually the kiss comes from someone who’s sticking around.

So, when the narrator speaks about dreams, what kind of connotation does that carry? Are dreams a good thing or a bad thing? If all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream, is it the kind of dream where we don’t want to wake up from it?

The sense of our speaker losing someone that they love provides the true nature of the question though: a perspective that criticizes what is real and what isn’t - and what we can control about it. Akin to The Conqueror Worm, by this poem stating that everything is a dream within a dream the speaker is voicing their doubt whether the dream we live in is even ours. What entity controls our lives in this dream?

By the end of the poem we hear the narrator say “Oh God” twice. With the growing desperation building in the poem in the second stanza, it seems that our speaker is asking God, even begging God, to hold onto the grains of sand falling away. And perhaps even asking God “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?”

Edgar Allan Poe’s wife, Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, died only two years before this poem was written. To any that really know Poe, they can confidently state that Virginia’s death severely impacted Poe’s life and his work. It’s been recorded that a close friend of his said, “The loss of his wife was a sad blow to him. He did not seem to care after she was gone whether he lived an hour, a day, a week or a year. She was his all.” Charles Chauncey Burr has also written, “Many times after the death of his beloved wife he was found at the dead hour of a wintery night, sitting beside her tomb almost frozen in the snow.” He even turned to alcohol after his wife’s health began failing due to tuberculosis, having abstained from his poison for quite some time. And although he did court a handful of women after Virginia’s death, it was said by Francis Sergeant Osgood, another poet who courted Poe, “Virginia was the only woman whom he ever loved.” I mean that is just so touching and sad at the same time.

Even two years after a loved one’s death, it is not something so easily brushed aside. Living without someone that important to you can become tortuous. And in my opinion, that’s exactly what this poem is all about: how Poe was so tortured to have to live without his beloved wife.

You know, it’s interesting. Most people would shake their fists at the sky and shout “How could God let this happen?” But Poe grasps at the sands of time he and Virginia have lost, and asks God, “Is it futile to love if all it leads to is loss?” He states firmly at the beginning that this is the case - ALL that we see or seem IS but a dream within a dream - it doesn’t matter. But he changes his mind at the end.

The ending of the poem basically states, “Even if love only leads to loss, I don’t want to forget.”

Poe is unsure as to what he is in control of in his life. Maybe he’s even asking himself, “If I had done something different would she still be here? What more could I have done? Did I do something wrong? Did I do something to make her deserve this?” And just 7 months after this poem was published, Poe died.

There is no control that Poe could have had over his wife’s condition, especially at his time. Doctors and medicine just weren’t what they are now. He could literally do nothing to help her. And I can’t imagine how helpless and small that would have made him seem in his own mind and how little control he thought he had in life. Like grains of sand slipping through his fingers, trying to catch each one in a futile effort to keep something that’s going away. That is surely the truest meaning of this poem.

It is my belief that you, you as an individual, have an immense power - the most important power that one could ever be given: the power to make choices. You are the most important factor in your life. And what matters is what you choose to do, even in impossible circumstances. We can’t control everything but we can control ourselves. And sometimes that's enough.

And sometimes, just like Poe, we find ourselves with the carpet being tugged out from under our feet, and the understanding we have of our life is suddenly shattered. Our meaning and even our reason for living disappears. And we find ourselves asking, “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?”

My counsel to you is that the true meaning of life is to live. And living entitled pain but it only entitles pain because it also entitles joy. The joy you find in taking a breath of fresh air, enjoying nature, of eating a good piece of pizza, of seeing a smile on someone’s face. As it’s said in the musical Les Miserables, “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

Live. For life, even if it be a dream within a dream, is one which we dream together.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Poe Show. If you enjoyed what you heard then subscribe to this podcast, leave it a good rating so it reaches more people, and share your favorite episode with your family and friends. Remember you can send an anonymous text message straight to the podcast by clicking the “send us a text message” link or by emailing poeshowpod@gmail.com. Both of those things are in the description of this episode. Send me any questions or suggestions for the next episode at any time. Well that’s all for now, but you’ll hear from me again in the next episode of The Poe Show.