because, perhaps, he's said all I want to say...

take this kiss upon the brow!

and, 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 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?

~Edgar Allen Poe