I fell in love with books as a child and often read anything and everything that caught my interest. One of the books that caught my attention in 5th grade was 'The Gold Bug' by Edgar Allan Poe. Thinking that adventures with cryptic messages and pirate treasure was all that he wrote, I started reading everything I could get my hands on by Mr. Poe. I was surpisingly mistaken, his style was also mysterious, macabre, and often about death or questioning it. It was my first glimpse of 'Gothic'. The Fall of the House of Usher and The Raven are also stories that I was fond of in this genre.
When I first read the poem 'A Dream Within A Dream' I was intrigued by it, believing there was a secret message in it somewhere. It wasn't until 1985, while listening to Propaganda's 'A Secret Wish' that I was shocked to hear the poem done so well to music; falling helplessly in love with both Susan and Claudia's voices that I listened to the album non stop. It was then that I realize the meaning of the poem. I hope that the video of the song below will help you understand as well. Hopefully I can write about the tragic life of Edgar Allen Poe sometime in the future. In the meantime, enjoy this poem and ponder the questions that Poe asks of our life.
JTV
Oh, and for those that don't think poems can be good songs check this out! They are all one and the same.
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?
Edgar Allan Poe
Propaganda - A Dream Within A Dream
note: The special guest on drums is none other than Steve Jansen the brother of David Sylvian. They were at the time still in Japan.