A Dream Within A Dream - Edgar Allen Poe

Yes.  For you Princess Bride fans,* that is the actual name of Poe's poem.  

We were discussing the Seven Deadly Sins this evening, and we ended up at the Wikipedia article when Dear Husband couldn't remember all of the Latin names.  We wandered a bit further through the Wikipedia while looking up similar concepts in other faiths:  Arishadvarga in Hindu theology, and Kleshas in Buddhism.  Eventually, after donating to the Wikipedia because we use it so often, we ended up at the main Wikipedia page which featured an article on being hanged, drawn, and quartered (I wouldn't recommend reading it).  Dear husband asked who painted the illustration with the article (I don't recommend looking at it either).  

The illustration was from a manuscript of Froissart, a medieval, French, chronicle writer.  We couldn't easily find the artist who painted the illustration, but the Froissart article mentioned that one of his manuscripts was illustrated by Brugeois artists of the day - from the Flemish city of Bruges.  I will show the Wikimedia photo for Bruges (below), which makes me really want to go back to Europe some day.

 

Getting back to the Seven Deadly Sins, while I was looking for the Latin names, we ended up at the post about sloth, at The Starry Cave.  The post goes into depth on sloth (socordia): 

...Sloth has turned into absolute selfishness where one become a burden to ones surroundings where one’s own misery and hopelessness becomes the ominous worth of one’s sorry excuse for a life. A life where one feeds upon others goodwill and favors, where one expect the world to listen to one’s putrid lament while one is not giving anything to anyone – not even to oneself. Sloth can work as a darkened scale where one pleases others because one has renounced ones centre or that one like a beast of pestilence demands the world to attend to the suffering void of one´s painful existence. In both cases one has sacrificed ones soul to the realm of Hypnos and has taken greedily the chalice of Lethe’s waters of forgetfulness to mend ones pain and self-inflicted soul-sores. This is true sloth; a denial of love both its coming and going...  

 

I recommend reading the whole post.  

 

The post concludes with Edgar Allen Poe's poem, 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?

   

* Here it is. I know you want to see it again:

 

 

Comments

[Sue Patterson]

I love how one thing leads to another!
Did you know that when Alyssa got married and Katie had to give the Maid of Honor toast - before she broke into song, she quoted "Mawidge! It's what bwings us togetha today." lol

[M Light]

LOL!