"A Dream Within a Dream" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's more famous poems, addressing the blurred line between reality and illusion. The poem is divided into two stanzas, each describing a separate but related scenario. In the first, the speaker is bidding farewell to a loved one and laments the transience of all things. The second stanza is more metaphoric, describing the futile effort to hold onto grains of sand as they slip through the speaker's fingers, serving as a metaphor for the impossibility of holding onto time, love, or even reality itself. The poem ends with a desperate query, questioning the nature of all that we experience: "Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?"