{
 "id": "edgar-allan-poe/a-dream-within-a-dream",
 "title": "A Dream Within a Dream",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Edgar Allan Poe",
 "poet_slug": "edgar-allan-poe",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Poetry",
 "book_slug": null,
 "book_kind": "compilation",
 "sequence": null,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1849,
  "venue": "Flag of Our Union (31 March 1849)",
  "note": "Earlier states of the poem were printed as “Imitation” in Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827) and as “To ——” in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829), and lines from it were folded into “Tamerlane” in Poems (1831). The poem under this title, in this form, first appeared in the Flag of Our Union; Mabbott's copy-text is Griswold's 1850 reprint of that printing.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.eapoe.org/works/info/pp017.htm"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/edgar-allan-poe_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2151",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Acrostic",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Elizabeth_(Poe)",
   "https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Serenade_(Poe)",
   "https://archive.org/details/worksedgarallan00unkngoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/cu31924019520810",
   "https://archive.org/details/jstor-2915307"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 31,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Take this kiss upon the brow!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, in parting from you now,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thus much let me avow⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You are not wrong, who deem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That my days have been a dream:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet if hope has flown away",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a night, or in a day,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a vision, or in none,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is it therefore the less gone?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All that we see or seem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is but a dream within a dream.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I stand amid the roar",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of a surf-tormented shore,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I hold within my hand",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grains of the golden sand⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "How few! yet how they creep",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Through my fingers to the deep,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While I weep⁠—while I weep!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O God! can I not grasp",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Them with a tighter clasp?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O God! can I not save",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One from the pitiless wave?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is all that we see or seem",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But a dream within a dream?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}