Question

Read the poem by Edgar Allen Poe and answer the following question:

What, if anything, does the sand in this poem symbolize? Defend your answer in at least three complete sentences

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:
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 seem
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‚
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?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?