A Dream Within A Dream

by EDGAR ALLAN POE (1840-1849)
featuring voice artist Jim Lueck as "Sylvester Stallone"

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?

Tuberculosis was a dreaded disease in the 19th century, one to which not only Poe’s wife succumbed, but also his mother. When Virginia Poe came down with this disease, there were no sanitariums or antibiotics with which to cure her. It was not even known at this time that tuberculosis was highly contagious. continue here

Edgar Allan Poe Contemporaries
Victor Hugo
Elizabeth Oakes Smith
Heinrich Heine
Charles Dickens

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