Escapism and Terror in Poe’s Dream-Themed Poems

^{In visions of the dark night}

^{I have dreamed of joy departed—}

^{But a waking dream of life and light}

^{Hath left me broken-hearted.}

^{Ah! what is not a dream by day}

^{To him whose eyes are cast}

^{On things around him with a ray}

^{Turned back upon the past?}

^{That holy dream—that holy dream,}

^{While all the world were chiding,}

^{Hath cheered me as a lovely beam}

^{A lonely spirit guiding.}

^{What though that light, thro' storm and night,}

^{So trembled from afar—}

^{What could there be more purely bright}

^{In Truth's day-star?}

The given poem was written in 1827, when Poe was only 18 years old. In 1827, he dropped out of university due to massive gambling depts. He was also heartbroken because of her first fiance's marriage to someone else. The poem attempts to find a holy escape from a reality that betrays one.

The poem explores the fragile relation between the fact that how dreams are a comforting escape from harsh reality and how they serve as a reminder of the evil reality. In the poem, the speaker describes waking from a dream as facing with the pain of reality. While "the world were chiding" and offering blame and disapproval, dreams provide comfort. The logic of the poem is basically that the life is a nightmare and dreams are a sanctuary.

In the first stanza, Poe emphasizes the transience of happiness. It is fleeting, doesn't last forever and it vanishes like a dream when you wake up to this evil world. He sees happiness as a dream that eventually ends and leaves the dreamer in this judgemental, cold world.

He also questions if our waking life is similar to our sleeping life which doesn't exist physically. If his dreams feel real and the horror is when he is awake then how can he tell which one is the true reality? He lives his waking life as a nightmare that he cannot escape from, even when awake.

Overall, there is a common theme in his work that the "real world" is a wicked place and the only "lovely and soothing" things are in the illusions we create in our minds.

^{Take this kiss upon the brow!}

^{And, in parting from you now,}

^{Thus much let me avow —}

^{You are not wrong, who deem}

^{That my days have been a dream;}

^{Yet if hope has flown away}

^{In a night, or in a day,}

^{In a vision, or in none,}

^{Is it therefore the less gone?} 

^{All that we see or seem}

^{Is but a dream within a dream.}

^{I stand amid the roar}

^{Of a surf-tormented shore,}

^{And I hold within my hand}

^{Grains of the golden sand —}

^{How few! yet how they creep}

^{Through my fingers to the deep,}

^{While I weep — while I weep!}

^{O God! Can I not grasp}

^{Them with a tighter clasp?}

^{O God! can I not save}

^{One from the pitiless wave?}

^{Is all that we see or seem}

^{But a dream within a dream?}

The given poem was written in 1849, when Poe was 40 years old. 1849 was Poe's death year as well. In 1847, his wife and cousin Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe died of tuberculosis. He, from then on, struggled with severe alcoholism, poverty and declining mental health.

In this poem, he acknowledges the instability of reality and the human struggle against the time passing. He questions whether anything is actually real. He suggests that life might just be perceptions and imaginations. The poem also highlights that no matter how hard one try, time will pass anyway and everything will eventually fade away.

The narrator is hopeless as he thinks he has no control over his own life. Poe uses the "grains of golden sand" metaphor to show this idea. It represents the fact that how he is unable to save even a small amount of sand, literally meaning, that how he was unable to save his dying wife.

Furthermore, this line also reveals his initial fear as well. If the sand slips through his hands, he would feel as if he has failed to hold it. However, if the sand is only a dream, it would show that he never truly possessed those moments at all. They were as hollow as a dream. Eventually, he wants to show the agony of being unable to grasp a single moment of reality in a world that is incessantly dying away.

Both poems are motivated by a deep sense of loss—whether it’s a "joy departed" in "A Dream" or the passage of time in "A Dream Within a Dream". Both poems question the nature of reality. There is a real world that is accepted, a dream world and there is a clear cut distinction between them in "A Dream", but the boundary disappears in the latter. The "holy beam" of the dream gets swallowed by the darkness of the reality in "A Dream Within a Dream."

Poe presents dreams as comforting and tranquilizing phenomena in the beginning of his literary career, later on, however, he finds them terrifying. Also his understanding of reality changes along the way, as well. In "A Dream" he could at least refuge to a holy dream to escape a bad reality, however, in the latter he fears that everything is just a simulation within "a dream within a dream." He feels as if he is losing his grip on truth.