In the first stanza of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “A Dream Within a Dream” it depicts the narrator kissing their lover farewell, as if they are parting ways, “[t]ake this kiss upon the brow! / [a]nd, in parting from you now…” (1-2). He then claims “[t]hat my days have been a dream” (5). As if he lives his life out as a dream. Further reading into the poem, in the second stanza, that narrator is being described as on the beach, holding handfuls of sand as they slip through his fingers falling into the ocean. “And I hold within my hand / [g]rains of the golden sand — / [h]ow few! Yet how they creep / [t]hrough my fingers to the deep…” (14-17). The sand represents time, that once the time is up and the sand is completely out of the hand, the recognize
