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Overview
“A Dream Within a Dream” is a lyric poem that Edgar Allan Poe wrote in the final year of his life, 1849
. This poem shares many of the hallmarks that have made Poe’s work so beloved. It features a tortured speaker who feels deeply unsettled by their increasing uncertainty about the nature of reality. However, it’s also more existential than some of Poe’s other work. A key image in the poem shows the speaker crying out to God as handfuls of sand slip through their fingers—a powerful symbol for mortality and the unstoppable passage of time.Read a summary & analysis, an analysis of the speaker, and explanations of important quotes from “A Dream Within a Dream.”
