Poetry & Analysis
Selected Poems
Sad PoemsA 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?
Overview Short Summary
Poe’s poem turns doubt and worry into the image of sand slipping through the hand. It speaks to fear of loss, uncertainty about reality, and the helpless feeling of not being able to hold on.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Doubt: The poem questions whether life itself is dreamlike.
- Loss: Hope and time slip away despite the speaker’s effort.
- Helplessness: The speaker cannot save even one grain from the wave.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is desperate and questioning, while the mood is sorrowful and unstable.
Craft Literary Devices
- Symbolism: The sand symbolizes time, hope, and things that cannot be kept.
- Repetition: The repeated question gives the poem its anxious force.
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
Overview Short Summary
Keats names the fear of dying before he can write, love, and become known. This poem is a classic fit for searches around poems about worry, fear, ambition, and uncertainty.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Fear of death: The speaker worries that life may end before his work is complete.
- Creative anxiety: Books, thoughts, and unwritten poetry become sources of urgency.
- Letting go: The ending imagines love and fame dissolving into nothingness.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is anxious and contemplative, while the mood is lonely and vast.
Craft Literary Devices
- Metaphor: The mind becomes a field of grain waiting to be gathered.
- Imagery: Stars, clouds, books, and the shore expand personal worry into a cosmic scene.
The Rainy Day
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
Overview Short Summary
Longfellow’s poem uses rain as an image for sadness and worry. Its final stanza offers one of the clearest classic messages about enduring dark days without losing faith in the sun behind the clouds.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Sadness and worry: The weather mirrors the speaker’s emotional state.
- Hope: The sun behind the clouds suggests that hardship is temporary.
- Common human experience: The poem reminds readers that everyone has difficult days.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is melancholic but consoling, and the mood moves from gloom toward reassurance.
Craft Literary Devices
- Pathetic fallacy: The cold, dark weather reflects the speaker’s mood.
- Refrain: The repeated “dark and dreary” phrase reinforces worry and heaviness.
A Psalm of Life
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Overview Short Summary
This poem responds to worry and despair by urging action, courage, faith, and patience. It is a strong inspirational poem for readers who want poems about worry and hope rather than poems that only describe fear.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Action over worry: The poem urges readers to act in the present instead of being trapped by past or future.
- Courage: Life is imagined as a battlefield where bravery matters.
- Hope for others: A person’s courage can leave footprints that help someone else.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is energetic, moral, and encouraging, while the mood is uplifting.
Craft Literary Devices
- Metaphor: Life becomes a battlefield, a voyage, and a path across sand.
- Imperative language: Commands such as “Act” and “Be a hero” give the poem urgency.
The World Is Too Much with Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Overview Short Summary
Wordsworth’s sonnet is useful for readers searching for poems about stress and worry because it criticizes a life consumed by getting, spending, and losing touch with nature.
Core Ideas Main Themes
- Modern restlessness: The poem suggests that worldly busyness wastes inner power.
- Nature and peace: Nature is presented as a lost source of emotional renewal.
- Spiritual emptiness: The speaker feels out of tune with the living world.
Emotional Effect Tone and Mood
The tone is frustrated and mournful, with a mood of spiritual unease.
Craft Literary Devices
- Personification: The sea, winds, and flowers are given living presence.
- Allusion: Proteus and Triton show the speaker’s longing for a more enchanted world.
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