The Poetry of Dreams: The perfect poems before sleep

Written by Edgar Allan Poe

Narrated by Alex Jennings

‘Perchance to dream’ is an offer that most of us would accept in the blink of an eye. That mysterious ‘other world’ where the day’s reality is processed by our subconscious, really is a mystery, even to the experts and self-help books who decipher our beguiling imaginings with all sorts of reasonings. Perhaps the better truth is that most of us don’t remember much about our dreams, unlike its near neighbour the nightmare! Day-dreams too fall into a fantasy imagining where we try to re-route the natural course of events as we move from one emotion to another.

Our unconscious dreams seem essential for our mental and emotional well-being and some believe they provide solutions, answers and prophesize important events. In the conscious world we use the word to describe our goals, desires and wishes which reveal much about who we are and our chosen path for life.

Whatever their significance may or may not be, they are universal and a subject on which our poets have much to say.

With such a rich seam to mine, our poets from Sarojini Naidu to Lewis Carroll, Edna St Vincent Millay to Shakespeare by way of Antonio Machado and Longfellow and a host of others provide a pillowful of poems that will set you dreaming.

01 - The Poetry of Dreams - An Introduction

02 - He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven by W B Yeats

03 - A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allen Poe

04 - The Dream by John Donne

05 - The Dream by Amy Levy

06 - Ay, Workman, Make Me A Dream by Stephen Crane

07 - House of Dreams by Sara Teasdale

08 - My Darling Dear, My Daisy Flower by John Skelton

09 - Roses of a Dream by Damon Runyon

10 - A Ballad of Dreamland by Algernon Charles Swinburne

11 - Longing by Matthew Arnold

12 - The Dream by Alexander Pushkin

13 - A Dream by Edgar Allen Poe

14 - The Dream by Aphra Behn

15 - Love by Rupert Brooke

16 - This Faulted Dream by Daniel Sheehan

17 - Sonnet 87 - Farewell! Thou Art Too Dear For My Possessing by William Shakespeare

18 - The Dream Called Life by Pedro Calderon de la Barca

19 - Dream Fable by Rabia al Basri

82 - Under the April Moon by Bliss William Carman

21 - Song of a Dream by Sarojini Naidu

22 - A Midday Dreamer by James Weldon Johnson

23 - Dreams Old by D H Lawrence

24 - A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky (Life Is But a Dream) by Lewis Carroll

25 - Dream Town by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

26 - A Little Boy's Dream by Katherine Mansfield

27 - The Opal Dream Cave by Katherine Mansfeild

28 - Dreams by John Dryden

29 - Life Tells the Dreamer by Margaret Widdemer

30 - Dreams by Anne Bronte

31 - The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver by Edna St Vincent Millay

32 - My Dead Dream by Sarojini Naidu

33 - Dreams by Edgar Allen Poe

34 - I Wake And Feel The Fell Of Dark Not Day by Gerard Manley Hopkins

35 - I Go on Dreaming of Paths by Antonio Machado

36 - Dreamland by Edgar Allen Poe

37 - I Dream'd I Lay by Robert Burns

38 - A Dream Lies Dead by Dorothy Parker

39 - Harlem by Langston Hughes

40 - Forgotten Dreams by Edward Silvera

41 - Boaz Asleep by Victor Hugo

42 - A Dream of Glory by Albery Allson Whitman

43 - I Rose From Dreamless Hours by James Elroy Flecker

44 - From Dewy Dreams, My Soul Arise by James Joyce

45 - Dream Variation by Langston Hughes

46 - Dreams by Robert Tannahill

47 - Dreams by Robert Herrick

48 - Dream Pediary by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

49 - Dreamland by Christina Rossetti

50 - A Nocturnal Reverie by Anne Kingsmill-Finch

51 - Dreams and Duty by Tom Kettle

52 - Last Night I Dreamed by Hafiz

53 - Musselman's Dream by Anne Kingsmill-Finch

54 - Th

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Copyright Group
• Release date: Jan 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781803545400

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) reigned unrivaled in his mastery of mystery during his lifetime and is now widely held to be a central figure of Romanticism and gothic horror in American literature. Born in Boston, he was orphaned at age three, was expelled from West Point for gambling, and later became a well-regarded literary critic and editor. The Raven, published in 1845, made Poe famous. He died in 1849 under what remain mysterious circumstances and is buried in Baltimore, Maryland.