Question

State how the reader knows that the usual connotation of the word dream does not apply in this poem. Use details from the poem to support your answer.
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;5
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 seem10
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-15
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? 20
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Answer 1

"I believe that the sand in the poem symbolizes time. The fact that the sand is constantly slipping through the narrator's hands and his inability to 'grasp it with a tighter clasp' means that he is running out of time and that he is trying to keep it for himself, but is ultimately failing to do that. Time is running out on him and it is futile to try to chase after it. "