The poet has real issues with reality and the meaning of life. His days have been a dream; hope flies away, and all that exists is a dream...within a dream. Although the poet acknowledges only what he knows to be real, but then doubts this reality as if he were a psychotic sollipsist.
The poet's repeated cries of "O God' not only express a despairing spirit about the impermanence of things, but coupled with the phrase "all that we see or seem" includes all known reality, which we would assume if we believe in God is controlled and created by Him. Yet to the poet, all seems a dream within a dream, indicating that the poet views both God and the creation as probably dreams and unreal.
Or does he?
Because he asks rather than declares "Is all that we see or seem..." Perhaps he is hoping against hope that someone out there, perhaps God, would answer him, reassure him.
So the diction is personal, metaphorical, emotional. It is also interrogatival, and the very fact that he asks and asks, rather than states unequivocally is the kind of diction that betrays both despair and the hope that an answer exists that negates finity, cruelty, and meaninglessness
A Dream Within a Dream" reflects Poe's feelings about his life at the time, dramatizing his confusion in watching the few precious things in his life slip away.
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
I believe this poem is Poe coming to terms with his mortality and maybe
also losing faith in God or at least questioning God. In the first two
lines, Poe is saying farewell to life, his immortality. I disagree with
the interpretation that Poe is saying goodbye to a lover. He is giving a
kiss on the brow, not the lips or the cheek. It seems a more "general"
farwell. He goes on to say, "you are not wrong, who deem, that my days
have been a dream." It seems to me that he is talking not to just one
person, but to everyone.
Some people have commented that poe was only 18 when he wrote this poem,
and therefore he was too young to be thinking about his mortality. I
disagree. It is obvious that he was very advanced in his thinking for
being so young. It is amazing that he wrote this poem at only 18 in
itself! This is also an age when more mature thinking starts to show
itself. He was in the army at this time, and in war, soldiers die, so I
think this is a perfect time for young Poe to start thinking about his
death and questioning whether God exists. When he says "you are not wrong,
who deem, that my days have been a dream.", he may be saying that his
thinking before this was dreamy and immature and that he is finally growing
up.
His days are dreams, because they do not exist anymore. The days past are
gone. Dreams end. Life also has an end. All his days pass into
nonexistance, just like the larger "dream" of his life eventually will.
Dreams (days) within a dream (life). His previous hopes that this isn't so,
that he will always exist, that there is something more, is gone. "Hope
has flown away." and once it's gone and doubt creeps in, you can't go back
to your old thinking.
In the second stanza, nonexistance is given the form of the ocean, and his
days (or time in general, as sand is often a metphor for time in poems) are
grains of sand, that he is powerless to stop from slipping away. I think
here he wanted to give the impression and image of an hourglass. The waves
of nonexistance are stealing his days, and will eventually take all of
them.
Even though he has accepted the fact of his mortality in the first stanza,
he still fights it in the second, pleading with God (if he exists) to save
him, to let him know that his life will not pass into the "deep" of
nothingness. He tries to hold on to just one grain of sand; just one moment
in time that will stretch forever and save him from his impending death.
He wants to believe and have hope again that his existance is not just a
dream and has purpose, so instead of stating it like at the end of the
first stanza, in desperation he asks it as a question in the second.
"Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?"
This is a beautiful poem that requires effort to read between the lines and
appreciate the beauty in the message of the words.
The first verse is talking about him kissing another goodbye on the
eyebrow, and his parting words is to tell that person that he acknowledges
that the other is not wrong is stating that his days 'have been a dream',
meaning he had been living in another world, so to say, building
sandcastles in the air and going after an impossible notion. And yet, he
refutes by saying that the other is not all right, because he asks if hope
has fled, no matter the time frame, does it mean it has disappeared
completely? The last two lines holds the theme of the poem. He states
clearly, that everthing 'we see or seem', 'is but a dream within a dream',
indicating that everything is a dream; a wish we habour in our hearts.
The second verse outlines his thought process over the matter, ending with
a question directed towards his first statement 'all that we see or seem,
is but a dream within a dream', thusly shaking the steady foundation upon
which that idea stood. The word choice is exceedingly deliberate and well
chosen if you can spot it. 'I stand amid the roar' signifies the thudering
confusion going on in his head and his uncertainty in the world, and
'surf-tormented shore' shows that he feels depressed and discouraged by
torment, be in self-inflicted or by others. '...golden sand' employs the
concensus attached to 'golden', that is, purity and value. The sands
represent the opportunities in life, and '...how few!' shows what he thinks
of how often they come by. '...creep...to the deep' dictate that the
opportunities move slowly and silently past you so you don't realise it
till they are gone, and 'to the deep' tells that they are so far gone they
could no longer be retrieved. He rallies a cry of despair, asking why he
could not have caught them with a 'tighter clasp', voicing his displeasure
at having lost them and not being able to 'save one from the pitiless
wave'. 'Pitiless' shows the cruelty of those who tear the opportunity from
him, and 'wave' brings to mind the image of a overbearing rush of torrent
that one is helpless against. These two words highlight the futility of the
cry for the lost 'sand'. He ends by showing how this experience,
personified by an occurence of sand falling from his hand into the vast
ocean, has rocked what he once thought certain.
This is merely what I think his is trying to say, and hope that this may
help others better understand the poem.
