please answer me soon as possible i need all the help i can get on a dream within a dream

-- Anonymous, December 07, 2001

Answers

i think the poem's main theme is the slippage and passage of the loves in our lives as well as life itself. poe describes time as grains of sand slipping through a clutched fist.

-- Anonymous, February 28, 2002

I think the Theam is to enjoy every moment of your life because once it is gone it will not be able tocome back

-- Anonymous, March 19, 2002

Poe lost almost everyone that he was close to. I believe that he is talking about all of the people he has lost in his life, and how he was powerless to save them. The Sands are people he loved, which make up the shore,his life, and the water is death. "I stand amid the roar/ Of a surf-tormented shore" what this means is his life has been ravaged by death. "And I hold withing my hand/ Grains of the golden sand--" He is referring to those he loves. "How few! yet how they creep/ Through my fingers to the deep,/ While I weep-- while I weep!" He watches all of them slip through his hand to die in the waters, and all he can do is weep. "Oh God! can I not grasp.... One from the pitiless wave?" Expresses his powerlessness to save them from death. "Is all that we see or seem/ But a dream within a dream?" All we know is just a dream before our eyes that we are helpless to take hold of. I think this poem is great, easily one of my favorites! But who cares? Well, hope that helped (I didn't check the date...)

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2002

what i think is that when he meant the poem, he meant that poeple keep dying, as soon as he recovers from the first time, and the time before that. It is an endless cycle. Usually, that's what a person thinks of when they hear the phrase.

-- Anonymous, February 24, 2003

I think he might be talking not about friends and lovers dieing, but rather about all the precious moments that life brings and how they always fade away into a memory, and eventually fade to the point where it is almost vague as to whether they really existed at all. Life's little moments can seem less real than a dream when the waves of time have washed them away - just another way of looking at it.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2003