‘A Dream Within a Dream’ is a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1849.

The poem is 24 lines, divided into 2 stanzas.

The poem questions the way one can distinguish between reality and fantasy, asking,

‘Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?’ –

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?

For my own part I have never had a thought
Which I could not set down in words
With even more distinctness
Than that with which I conceived it
There is however a class of fancies
Of exquisite delicacy, which are not thoughts
And to which as yet I have found it
Absolutely impossible to adapt to language

These fancies arise in the soul
Alas how rarely, only at epochs
Of most intense tranquility
When the bodily and mental
Health are in perfection
And at those weird points of time
Where the confines of the waking world
Blend with the world of dreams
And so I captured this fancy
Where all that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream

Tales of Mystery and Imagination is the debut studio album by the The Alan Parsons Project.

The lyrical and musical themes of the album are retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe.