stand surf-tormented shore
is all we see, seem but a
dream within a dream?
Adapted from the poem, A Dream within a Dream, by Edgar Allan Poe.
The poem was first published in the March 31, 1849, edition of the Boston-based story paper The Flag of Our Union, so says Wikipedia and I am too lazy today to challenge the statement so I will just cite it and be done with it.
Wikipedia also says, The poem dramatizes the confusion felt by the narrator as he watches the important things in life slip away. Realizing he cannot hold on to even one grain of sand, he is led to his final question whether all things are just a dream.”
Wikipedia cite’s that statement’s source as Dawn B. Sova’s book, Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001).
May all things are dreams and as Big Bill has Prospero say, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on … ” (The Tempest, Act 4 Scene 1)
Which I guess leads to the question, which comes first, the dreamer or the dream?
For the photo and something I may use later:
Shadows on the waves
frozen on the phone moments
caught once forever
Here is Mr. Poe’s poem.
A Dream within a Dream
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?
No Haiku For You 