Edgar Allan Poe
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
Edgar Allan Poe, “A Dream Within a Dream” (1849)
Documented source
Attribution
Edgar Allan Poe
Source
Edgar Allan Poe, “A Dream Within a Dream” (1849)
In full
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
Status
Public domain in the United States
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About this line
Published in 1849, the last year of Poe’s life, the poem ends on a beach with the speaker watching sand run through his fingers, unable to hold a single grain. It doesn’t wonder whether what we grasp is real — it concludes it isn’t.
Why we carry this line
Many of us know The Raven, but this was not a Poe line seen as often. That drew me in.
Objects carrying this line
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And all I lovd—I lovd alone—
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They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Poe · “Eleonora,” 1842
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There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.
Francis Bacon · Essays, 1625 — quoted by Poe in “Ligeia”
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