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?

Whatever I care for, someone else loves it
more, deserves it more: the doe with her
whole mouth crushing the phlox or the seer
who adores my future, whereas I could

take it or leave it. I know I’ll disappear.
It won’t be glamorous. It won’t be like when
the Mona Lisa was stolen and the tourists all
lined up to pay their respects at the empty
spot on the wall of the Louvre.

I’ve never actually even seen the sky.
I’ve only ever seen effluents, seen wattage.

The only night I remember is the dinner
of neighbors at which a man I never
had met before said I don’t fear dying—

look at the past, people have been dying forever, and—

then he stopped and shook his head—
I drank too much. I was almost saying
that people have died forever and all
of them survived, but of course—he made
a hard laugh—God, of course they didn’t survive.