Dreams - A Poem By Edgar Allan Poe

In this poem, Poe shows how youth is life's peak. As life continues, tragic and traumatizing experiences develop and cause thoughts to become negative. Poe goes further to reiterate how young children are untainted by the pervasion of life itself.

Transcript

Dreams a poem by Edgar Allan Poe Oh,

That my young life were a lasting dream!

My spirit not awakening till the beam of an eternity should bring the morrow.

Yes,

Though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,

T'were better than the cold reality of waking life to him whose heart must be,

And hath been still upon the lovely earth a chaos of deep passion from his birth.

But should it be,

That dream eternally,

Continuing as dreams have been to me,

In my young boyhood,

Should it thus be given,

T'were folly still to hope for higher heaven.

For I have reveled when the sun was bright.

I,

The summer sky,

In dreams of living light and loveliness,

Have left my very heart,

In climes of mine imagining,

Apart.

From my own home,

With beings that have been,

Of mine own thought,

What more could I have seen?

T'was once,

And only once,

And the wild hour,

From my remembrance shall not pass,

Some power or spell had bound me,

T'was the chilly wind,

Come o'er in the night and left behind,

Its image on my spirit,

O'er the moon,

Shone on my shoulders,

In her lofty noon,

Too coldly,

O'er the stars,

However it was.

That dream was as the night wind,

Let it pass.

Let it pass.

I have been happy,

Though but in a dream.

I have been happy,

And I love the theme,

Dreams,

In their vivid coloring of life,

As in that fleeting shadowy misty strife,

Of semblance with reality which brings,

To the delirious eye,

More lovely things,

Of paradise and love,

And all our own,

Than young hope in his sunniest hour hath known.