A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

I recall one of my most frightening dreams – a dream within a dream. Here it is:

It’s 5am, a glimmer of morning light providing enough vision to see in shadows. My head’s on my pillow and I look up and to the right: over the bedroom door there’s a mass, what I eventually detect as a face. Ah, I say to myself, I must have just now awoken from a dream and the barely discernible outline of a dark head with eyes, nose and mouth must be the play of shadows. Now awake, I linger on this dreamlike vision. Suddenly, the face turns toward me and makes a low roar. Startled, I sit up and let out a shout.

On reflection, I experienced a double whammy, a dream within a dream. Thus, I have an added appreciation for this Edgar Allan Poe poem:

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
“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?”