Line 1

Take this kiss upon the brow!

The speaker begins the poem by telling somebody to take a kiss upon the brow. Gee,
aren't we demanding?
This is Poe, who was all about the romance, so we'll go ahead and guess this is a dude
offering a girl a kiss. It sounds like the speaker is saying goodbye to this girl, but we don't
know where is going, or why he is leaving yet.
Whatever the case, it's urgent. He's gotta go. That's what that exclamation point's all
about.

Lines 2-5
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;

Well it turns out that our hunch was correctthe speaker is "parting," i.e. leaving, this
person.
And, "in parting," the speaker wishes to "avow" or express something to his special
friend.
What is it that he wants to tell her? Apparently, that she's not wrong when she says that
his days have all been a dream.
Hmm, that's strange. Either he really has been dreaming (in which case, we're in for a
trippy poem), or she's talking about how their time together has been dreamlike in its
awesomeness.
Whatever the case, it's certainly puzzling. It sounds like the speaker is questioning
whether or not everything that has happened to him is real, or whether it's just some
fantasy.
And whatever the case, it sounds like waking up from that dream is a bit of a bummer.
Why else is he peaceing out on his main squeeze?
Note too that there are some rhymes happening in here. Lines 1-3, and lines 4-5 rhyme
with each other. We could chart the rhyme scheme like this: AAABB.
If there's a rhyme scheme, it's always a safe bet to be on the lookout for meter, too. But in
this poem, it's a bit tricky to suss out just what meter it's written in, so for now we'll just
say that it's definitely iambic (hear that daDUM rhythm?). Head on over to "Form and
Meter" for the real skinny.
And, FYI, we still have no clue where the speaker is going. Is he about to wake up from a
real dream? Is he waking up from his fantasy? Is he literally going somewhere?

Lines 6-9
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?

Apparently the speaker isn't ready to hit the road just yet because he has a few more
cryptic remarks for his lady friend.
He ponders whether hope is any "less gone" if it flies away in a night, or in a day, in a
vision, or not in a vision. That sounds like a lot of mumbo-jumbo to us, so let's unpack it.
First of all, the speaker is asking if it makes any difference when hope leaves. It's like
asking, "Does it matter if my girlfriend dumps me in the day, or at night, if she's still gone
in the end?"
So the speaker is asking, and implying, that no matter when hope flies away (in the
course of a night, or a day, etc.) it's still gone, and that's the pits.
But notice, he doesn't just include night or day. He also says that if hope ditches him "in a
vision, or in none," it doesn't really matter. So even if it all was a dream, the point is, his
hope's gone no matter what.
Now, as for what particular hope, if any, the speaker is talking about, that's not so clear.
If we keep reading, maybe we can piece it all together.
Still, if we had to guess we'd say he's talking about his hope that life isn't a dream.
Realizing that everything you've experienced is all just some fantasy could be pretty
painful.
The speaker's departure from the woman seems to be a metaphor for this painful
realization. He's leaving the woman, and thus also leaving behind a fantasy or dream.
Form-wise, it looks like we're still working with rhyming couplets here, so keep an eye
out for that pattern to continue for the rest of the poem.

Lines 10-11
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

Earlier the speaker had told the woman that she was spot on when she said that his life
was one big dream. Now he's out and out agreeing with her by saying the very same thing
himself.
Only it's not just his life he's going on aboutthis time it applies to all of us.
And it's not just a dream, but a dream within a dream, like in that movie Inception.
Dreams are pretty confusing in themselves, but dreams within dreams? That's definitely a
head scratcher. If everything is a dream within a dream, then everything is super, duper,
extra unreal, right?
Let's think of it like this: there's reality, then there's dreams, then there's dreams within
dreams. Regular dreams are one degree removed from reality, so dreams within dreams
are two degrees removed from reality.
The implications of this conundrum are profound. If everything is a dream within a
dream, that means that if we could somehow get out of the "dream," then we would still
be inside a dream. Pretty terrifying, if you ask Shmoop.
 It's a very strange way of saying that everything will always be dreamy or fantastical or
imaginary. The speaker is claiming that there is no such thing as reality and that we are
not who we actually are.
So wait a minute, where does this fantasy come from? Do our minds produce it? Is it like
the Matrix where some evil machines are producing this fake reality for us, and we're all
a bunch of dupes?
Or is this just some depressing and clever way to say that we can never experience the
world around us without using the preconceptions, illusions, and fantasies of our own
minds?
We'll go with this last one, just to be safe, but any way you slice it, Mr. Poe has clearly
outdone himself here. International. Man. Of. Mystery.
And you thought Inception was confusing.

Lines 12-15
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand

New stanza, new setting.

Now the speaker is standing near the "roar" of a "surf-tormented shore" and holding
grains of golden sand in his hand.
"Surf-tormented" means that the shore is being bothered, harassed, or pounded by the
surf of the ocean. And that roar? Just imagine the sound of some really loud waves. Or a
lion if you prefer.
Where is this ocean anyway? How did we get from the lady and that dream within a
dream stuff to the shore?
Well, maybe since everything is just a big dream, our speaker has been magically
transported to a seashore somewhere. There are no rules in dreams, right?
At the same time, it almost seems like the speaker is trying to convince himself that
everything is real and not just an illusion. Notice, for example, all the details he gives.
There's a shore, it's tormented by some rough waves, which "roar," and it's made up of
golden sand that the speaker actually grasps.
Okay, surf-tormented shore, speaker holding sand, now what?

Lines 16-18
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weepwhile I weep!

How few? How few of what? Grains of sand? Yep, the speaker can only hold onto a few
grains at a time.
 And yet even those few somehow manage to creep through the speaker's fingers down to
the deep, or the ocean. He just can't hold on to them.
Poe's tossing some figurative language our way by referring to the ocean metaphorically
as "the deep," and by telling us that grains of sand creepthat's personification.
Meanwhile, the speaker is weeping. Just to make sure we get the message, he tells us
twice that he is weeping while the sand slips through his fingers.
If holding onto the sand is his way of connecting to realityto something physicalthen
it makes sense that he's feeling bummed. His grip on reality, like the sand, is slipping
away. That causes him a lot of frustration (note the two exclamation points and all that
weeping).

Lines 19-22
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?

As if we didn't already know, the speaker drives home the point about his exasperation
(two more exclamation points).
He appeals to God, and asks if he can't hold on to them (the grains of sand) with a
"tighter clasp" and if he can't save one from the "pitiless wave."
The negative questions here imply negative answers. The answers to the speaker's "can I
not" are clearly meant to be "no, you can't."
The speaker so desperately wants to "save" the sands and hold them "tighter" because he
wants to prove that he can do it, to prove that everything is real and not just a fleeting
illusion.
The "pitiless wave" harkens back to that roaring, tormenting surf, and makes us think of
some type of unforgiving monster. Here, it seems to symbolize the power of illusion or
fantasy that keeps defeating the speaker's attempts to convince himself that what is in
front of him is real and can be "grasped."
But there's another way to think about all this: dreams end when we wake up, the sand is
running away from the speaker, and the speaker leaves a woman behind at the beginning.
Hmm. It kind of sounds like this poem has a lot to say about things disappearing from
one's life. Life is a dream, perhaps, because things are always going away: women,
reality, people we know, and the like. Nothing lasts, and when we look back on those
things, it feels like a dream.
Check out the symmetry of these lines. The first and third lines in the group are almost
identical ("Oh God! can I not"). The repetition indicates the speaker's continued failure to
succeed in his endeavor.

Lines 23-24
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
 Despite his failures, the speaker apparently does not give up hope. Earlier, he had straight
up said all that we see and seem is just a dream within a dream.
Here in the poem's concluding lines, which repeat the refrain, the speaker phrases it as a
question.
Then again, maybe he's just getting a bit desperate and having a "say it ain't so!" moment.
Even after all the sand has run through his fingers, and even after all his weeping, the
speaker can't bring himself to declare that all that we see and seem is but a dream within
a dream.
Perhaps he doesn't want to acknowledge the loss of the things in life that have slipped
through his fingersthe sand, his ladylove. Maybe he's afraid that none of it was real in
the first place. Either way, he's not exactly pumped about life at this moment.
This second stanza looks a lot like the first. It's chock full of rhyming couplets, with a trio
tossed in there (in lines 16-18). Only this time, the trio's smack dab in the middle of the
stanza, rather than at the beginning, and the second stanza has an extra two lines tacked
on. Be sure to check out "Form and Meter" for more.