1. Take this kiss upon the brow!
2. And, in parting from you now,
3. Thus much let me avow--
4. You are not wrong, who deem
5. That my days have been a dream;
6. Yet if hope has flown away
7. In a night, or in a day,
8. In a vision, or in none,
9. Is it therefore the less gone?
10. All that we see or seem
11. Is but a dream within a dream.
12. I stand amid the roar
13. Of a surf-tormented shore,
14. And I hold within my hand
15. Grains of the golden sand--
16. How few! yet how they creep
17. Through my fingers to the deep,
18. While I weep--while I weep!
19. O God! can I not grasp
20. Them with a tighter clasp?
21. O God! can I not save
22. One from the pitiless wave?
23. Is all that we see or seem
24. But a dream within a dream?
1. Original Text: The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, ed. R. W. Griswold (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1850), II, 40.
2. First Publication Date: 1850 (but a rewriting of "Should my early life seem" [1829]).