A Dream Within A Dream November 4, 2011

Oh what I’d give to write like this. The famous ‘A Dream Within A Dream’, a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe. It takes something else to write a poem so beautiful, I’m working so hard at it, but it seems futile, in the mean time, I’ll surround myself with the breath-taking poems, such as this one. I love it.

A Dream Within A Dream

by Edgar Allan Poe

 

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?

I Leave This At Your Ear October 22, 2011

I am a great believer in, you can only write great pieces if you can appreciate great pieces, and a poem that came up in a lecture recently that I haven’t been able to get out of my head, by W.S. Graham. I love the way it sounds, the way the words literally fall off of your tongue and the impressionistic imagery that harmonises surrealism and emotion in a beautiful amalgamation. I love how simply it is constructed, yet with the most complex of devices, and to create such a gentle and intimate work of art. If I were to comment critically on it, I would say that possibly the second stanza is a little too far fetched, but that’s just my opinion. And to be fair, despite this, I wouldn’t change it, though I guess a main reason why I adore it so much is because a hopeless romantic. Could it be argued that this kind of poetry is dead in modern day society? I’d like to think that’s we haven’t quite gone that far yet, maybe chivalry and courtship, well maybe not even that, just simple honest gentleness, is still around. Yes I am a believer in that it is alive and kicking somewhere. Let me know what you think.

I Leave This At Your Ear

by W.S Graham

 

I leave this at your ear for when you wake

A creature in its abstract cage asleep.

Your dreams bindfold you by the light they make.

 

The owl called from the naked-woman tree

As I came down by the Kyle farm to hear

Your house silent by the speaking sea.

 

I have come late but I have come before

later with slaked steps from stone to stone

To hope to find you listening for the door.

 

I stand in the ticking room. My dear, I take

A moth kiss from your breath. The shore gulls cry.

I leave this at your ear for when you wake.