The Poetry of Dreams

By Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Charles Swinburne and Lewis Carroll

‘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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835470541

Edgar Allan Poe

New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, with appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Department of Economics. He has also held a visiting professorship at MIT’s Media Lab. He has appeared on CNN and CNBC, and is a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s Marketplace. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and two children.

Book preview

The Poetry of Dreams

An Introduction

‘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.

Index of Contents

He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven by W B Yeats

A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allen Poe

The Dream by John Donne

The Dream by Amy Levy

Ay, Workman, Make Me A Dream by Stephen Crane

House of Dreams by Sara Teasdale

My Darling Dear, My Daisy Flower by John Skelton

Roses of a Dream by Damon Runyon

A Ballad of Dreamland by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Longing by Matthew Arnold

The Dream by Alexander Pushkin

A Dream by Edgar Allen Poe

The Dream by Aphra Behn

Love by Rupert Brooke

This Faulted Dream by Daniel Sheehan

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

The Dream Called Life by Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Dream Fable by Rabia al Basri

Under the April Moon by Bliss William Carman

Song of a Dream by Sarojini Naidu

A Midday Dreamer by James Weldon Johnson

Dreams Old by D H Lawrence

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

Dream Town by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A Little Boy's Dream by Katherine Mansfield

The Opal Dream Cave by Katherine Mansfield

Dreams by John Dryden

Life Tells the Dreamer by Margaret Widdemer

Dreams by Anne Bronte

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

My Dead Dream by Sarojini Naidu

Dreams by Edgar Allen Poe

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

I Go on Dreaming of Paths by Antonio Machado

Dreamland by Edgar Allen Poe

I Dream'd I Lay by Robert Burns

A Dream Lies Dead by Dorothy Parker

Harlem by Langston Hughes

Forgotten Dreams by Edward Silvera

Boaz Asleep by Victor Hugo

A Dream of Glory by Albery Allson Whitman

I Rose From Dreamless Hours by James Elroy Flecker

From Dewy Dreams, My Soul Arise by James Joyce

Dream Variation by Langston Hughes

Dreams by Robert Tannahill

Dreams by Robert Herrick

Dream Pediary by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Dreamland by Christina Rossetti

A Nocturnal Reverie by Anne Kingsmill-Finch

Dreams and Duty by Tom Kettle

Last Night I Dreamed by Hafiz

Musselman's Dream by Anne Kingsmill-Finch

The Day is Done by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Calm Poem by John Gould Fletcher

The Berg, A Dream by Herman Melville

The Haunting Dream by Victor Plarr

A Dream by William Allingham

Soldier's Dream by Wilfred Owen

The Slave's Dream by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Dream by David Macbeth Moir

A Day Dream by Emily