A Dream within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Mick, welcome to A2K. It might help if you were to include the poem by Poe, but I have done it for you:

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?

E. A. Poe

When explicating a poem, the best thing to do is to decide if it's literal or figurative. After that, it will be easier for you to determine Poe's intentions.

I've not seen this poem before and thank you for posting it.

In the first stanza it's as though someone is dying and in the second he realizes he can't hold on to her.

Nor I, Tarah.

Perhaps if Mick were to give us his/her thoughts we could have a group discussion.