by Poe · Cluster: Memory and Time · Memory · Nostalgia
Abstract
A short early lyric contrasting a cherished ‘holy dream’ of vanished joy with waking grief; meditates on memory, melancholy, and the light of Truth amid darkness.
Connections
Motifs: Dreams, Light and Dark, Memory, Night Themes & Concepts: Melancholy, Memory and Time, Grief and Loss, Truth, Nostalgia Forms & Genres: Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed—
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream—that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro’ storm and night,
So trembled from afar—
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth’s day-star?
1827.