How can we separate reality from illusion? What if, to quote from Edgar Allan Poe, ‘All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream’? ‘A Dream within a Dream’ muses on the fragility and fleetingness of everything, and asks whether anything we do has any lasting or real effect. ‘A Dream within a Dream’ by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) is one of Poe’s best-known poems.

‘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;