A Dream Within a Dream

In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “A Dream Within a Dream,” the narrator laments the fleeting passage of time and his utter powerlessness to control it. The backdrop of churning and surging triplets in the piano accompaniment portrays both the emotional distress of the speaker, as well as the physical turbulence of “a surf-tormented shore.” This tumult is interrupted by the refrain, in which the narrator ruminates on whether “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”