A dedication to my mother

Who looks after me every day of my
life.

 The inspiration for this next poem comes from
your favorite story, Snow White. I know how
much you enjoy it so I thought that I would
write something in the same air as ―Snow
White‖ with a bit of a modern twist. I hope
that you have as much fun reading it as I had
writing it, enjoy.

 Mirror, mirror on the wall  Mirror, mirror on the wall
 Do I really have to go to the Ball?  I think I hear my Mother call
 
 I think I hear my Mother call  Do I really have to go to the Ball?
 
 Do I really have to go to the Ball?  It‘s such a huge, huge Hall
 
 Oh how I wish it were Spring and not Fall  I wish I wasn‘t so very small
 
 Do I really have to go to the Ball?  I think I hear my Mother call
 
 Mirror, mirror on the wall  Oh Mirror, mirror on the wall
 I‘d rather go to the big city mall  Do I REALLY have to go to the Ball????

 I got the idea for this poem after you took a
cruise down to the Caribbean and came back
saying that it was hard to stand up on the boat
because of the rough sea. I decided to write it
after I went on a cruise for myself and
discovered just how difficult it really was. This
one is just for you.

 I went on a cruise this past Fall.  What a rough ride this came to be,
 The inside was like a shopping mall.  I even hit my knee.
 
 The ship was so huge,  I look around as I struggle up the
 It was a great refuge, stairs,
  All eyes are on me….pairs and
 From the hot sun outside, pairs.

 That wanted to burn my hide.

 ―What are you looking at?‖ I say,
 We stopped at the beach for a day or  ―We‘re glad you made it. Hooray!
two. Hooray!

 Boy that was hot, ―Whew!‖

 Not sure I liked that 7-day cruise,
 Back on the ship,  I woke up with many a bruise.

 ―Ouch!‖, I banged my hip.
 Maybe I‘ll try it again next year,
 They say you‘ve got to face your
fear.

 I decided to write this poem because of your
cat, Jack. I took inspiration from instances in
the past, and various other aspects of his long
and happy life . I hope this poem helps you
enjoy his memory.

 I have a cat named Jack.
 I found him in the haystack.

 He is a pretty color of grey.
 I hope he decides to stay.

 Every day we go outside and play.
 He likes to hide in the hay.

 He likes to roll around in the sun.
 We always have so much fun.

 His favorite food is tuna fish.
 I feed him from the silver dish.

 I‘m not sure when Jack‘s birthday is.
 Mine is today, maybe so is his.

 It‘s time for bed, Jack sleeps with me.
 Oh I hope he doesn‘t pee!

 As you know, I don‘t enjoy school at all, so I
decided to make this poem reflective of my
opinion on the school days I used to have. I‘d
like to say thank you for, among other things,
helping me make it through 12 rough, long
years of schooling.

 I‘m not a big fan of school you  I‘m off to gym class, now that‘s a
know. blast.
 But everyone says I have to go.  Too bad this class doesn‘t last.
 
 In the mornings I‘d rather sleep.  Lunch tastes good,
 Into my dreams I am so deep.  I knew it would.
 
 The alarm bell rings,  Thank goodness it‘s afternoon,
 And the radio sings.  I‘ll be going home soon.
 
 Mom says ―Get up, it‘s time for  Home at last, another day done,
school‖.  That really wasn‘t much fun.
 I‘d rather be swimming in the pool.

 So it‘s off to school I go,
 And in Home Ec I have to sew.

 I wrote this poem after I learned that you were
going to Spain next year. Traveling to a foreign
country can be dangerous, so I would like to
wish you luck in the future by dedicating this
poem to you. Good Luck

 This 50 cent piece came directly from Spain
 A trip on an airplane and then on a train

 The legend, they say mostly for fun
 Is to wear it when hiking to bring out the sun

 Try it here during practice and hopefully you‘ll find
 That the charm of this necklace will bring peace of mind

 Whatever the outcome, I want you to know
 That good luck will be with you wherever you go

 I decided to make dreams the theme of these
five entries. I know how interesting you find
dreams to be so I thought I‘d focus the rest f
this dedication to that.

 The structure of "A Dream Within a Dream" consists of two
stanzas containing two disparate but ultimately connected scenes.
The first stanza shows the first-person point of view of the
narrator parting from a lover, while the second places the narrator
on a beach while futilely attempting to grasp a handful of sand in
his hand.
 Despite the apparent differences between the two stanzas, they are
linked through the ironic similarity of their evanescent natures. In
the first image, the narrator is leaving his lover, indicating a sense
of finality (and mortality) to their love. Accordingly, the falling
grains of sand in the second stanza recall the image of an
hourglass, which in turn represents the passage of time. As the
sand flows away until all time has passed, the lovers' time also
disappears, and the sand and the romance each turn into
impressions from a dream. Through the alliteration in "grains of
the golden sand," Poe emphasizes the "golden" or desired nature
of both the sand and of love, but he shows clearly that neither is
permanently attainable.

 Like many of Poe's poems, "A Dream Within a Dream" uses the sea as a setting for
a discussion of death and decay. "The City in the Sea" illustrates the imagery of a
pitiless sea most clearly, with the Gothic allusions to the end of time, and in "A
Dream Within a Dream", the "surf-tormented shore" becomes a second metaphor
for time, as the waters of the sea slowly but inexorably pound away at the physical
existence of the shore. The narrator regards the wave as "pitiless," but he further
associates himself with the temporal nature of the water by weeping in tandem
with the falling of the sand.
 As the title, the phrase "a dream within a dream" has a special significance to any
interpretations of the poem. Poe takes the idea of a daydream and twists it so that
the narrator's perception of reality occurs at two degrees of detachment away from
reality. Consequently, this reality reflects upon itself through the dream medium,
and the narrator can no longer distinguish causality in his perception. By showing
the narrator's distress at his observations, Poe magnifies the risks of uncertainty
and of the potential changes to his identity. Time is a powerful but mysterious
force that promotes cognitive dissonance between the protagonist's self and his
abilities of comprehension, and the daydream proves to have ensnared him.
Alternatively, the poem itself may be viewed as the outermost dream, where the
inner dream is merely a function of the narrator's mind.

 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?

 In John Donne‘s poem ―The Dream,‖ the narrator is woken
from a dream by the person who he claims to have been
dreaming about. Like in the more popular Donne poem
―The Flea,‖ the narrator attempts to cajole the woman into
coming to bed with him by talking about the poetic conceit
(the dream, the flea) and how it relates to them. Unlike in
―The Flea,‖ however, Donne uses some very complex
imagery to describe the dream and the waking and to form
his arguments for her staying.
 Although nothing in ―The Dream‖ uses the feminine
pronoun to describe the one who wakes the narrator, the
imagery of an angel and the cajoling tone all point to a
feminine character. Because of this, Donne‘s romantic
reputation, and his use of the female pronoun in other
similar poems the following explication assumes that the
unnamed person who wakens the narrator is a woman.

 The narrator, glad to be awoken by the person he was dreaming
about, starts off by complementing her and attempts to bring her
into his bed. He tells her she is so true that she makes dreams into
reality and histories into fables.
 Although it‘s not a theme he uses often, the idea of a woman
altering history appears in one other Donne poem: The Damp. In
―The Damp‖ Donne challenged the wooed to ―…like a Goth and
Vandal rise, / Deface records and histories,‖ (lines 13-14) –to
make different choices then what she made in the past. In each
poem, Donne uses this image to portray women as have
remarkable power over reality and perceptions of reality.
 At the end of the stanza, much like the quip that was in his usage
of reason, Donne again makes a reference to the activities
occurring in the dream but in a less veiled way. ―Let‘s act out the
rest,‖ (line 10) as the line was originally written, coupled with his
calling her back into his arms, gives away the sexual nature of this
dream.

 The toughest and last stanza of the poem begins with the
easiest lines to paraphrase. She came into Donne‘s room and
woke him from an erotic dream. In the previous stanza he
said she knew the precise moment to wake him and, for
him, this means she was interested in playing out that
dream in reality. But as she gets up to leave, he questions
why she is leaving.

 If before Donne almost let her off the hook, he attempts to
drive it home now: He lets her go but not without an ―I‘ll
die without you parting shot.‖ It is not, however, in the
same sardonic spirit as before. Instead, he is returning to the
same power of altering history and waking him up with her
eyes. It is the classic ―without you I am nothing,‖ concept
from the troubadours.

 Dear love, for nothing less than thee
Would I have broke this happy dream;
It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for phantasy:
Therefore thou waked'st me wisely; yet
My dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it.
Thou art so truth that thoughts of thee suffice
To make dreams truths, and fables histories.
Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best
Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.
As lightning or a taper's light,
Thine eyes, and not thy noise, waked me;
Yet I thought thee
(For thou lov'st truth) an angel at first sight;
But when I saw thou saw'st my heart,
And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an angels art,
When thou knew'st what I dreamt, when thou knew'st when
Excess of joy would wake me, and cam'st then,
I must confess it could not choose but be
Prophane to think thee anything but thee.
Comming and staying showed thee thee,
But rising makes me doubt, that now
Thou art not thou.
That Love is weak, where fear's as strong as he;
'Tis not all spirit pure and brave
If mixture it of Fear, Shame, Honour, have.
Perchance as torches, which must ready be,
Men light and put out, so thou deal'st with me,
Thou cam'st to kindle, go'st to come; Then I
Will dream that hope again, but else would die.

 Notice that the things soldiers dream of are mundane
ordinary things, things they used perhaps to take for
granted and not think about. Normally the word "dreamers"
conjures up images of people imagining things like say
winning the lottery or building a perfect world. Here in the
"foul dug outs gnawed by rats" a dreamer is not someone
reaching out for the extraordinary but one longing for the
ordinary.
Also note the contrast between the first half of the poem and
the second. The image of soldiers and war that children
often cherish is about glory and a "flaming fatal climax" but
then when faced with the reality of such a thing minds and
hearts turn instead to "going to the office in the train". The
key word perhaps is "gray" Deaths gray land is where the
soldiers stand on the brink off and it is of the gray realities
of everyday life that they dream.

 Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.

 It is difficult to establish something that could be described as a universal interpretation
of the poem. What follows must therefore be my personal interpretation of the
symbolism in and meaning of A Dream.
 The narrator is a troubled soul who wishes for something other than reality. The tone in
the poem suggests that death, possibly through suicide, might be an option to obtain this
state of ‗other than reality‘. In the second verse, however, the narrator seems to revel in
his memories too strongly to allow death to be an option, perhaps in fear of death
causing loss of his memories of the past.
 In the poem, Poe explores the mystery and magic of dreams. To be more exact: The
power of the divide between dreams and real life: the possibility of hiding in a dream
world � or a fantasy world, more likely � to escape the troubles of real life. Rather than
death, the narrator wishes to escape from reality through dreams and fantasies. In verse
one and three, the narrator describes the same basic scenario twice: The safety of the
dream-world, and the dangers of the real world. It is tricky to ascertain what these
dangers are, but � considering the atmosphere and narrative voice � inner conflicts
such as loneliness, grief, depression, shame or remorse seem viable options.
 If the poem can indeed be said to be a description of the narrator‘s attempt at escaping
reality, the contrasts become clear: The darkness is safety from other people, and
possibly from the narrator himself. The line ―But a waking dream of life and light hath
left me broken-hearted‖ describes the narrator‘s fears of what happens when the spell of
his fantasy world is broken: Upon ‗waking up‘ from his fantasy world he feels
heartbroken, and wishes only to return to his own, safe, fantasy world.

 Because of daylight breaking dreams, the lightness � although
typically connected with Goodness � is considered negative by
the narrator. The last verse describes how daylight (if ‗day-star‘ is
indeed synonymous with the sun) sheds light on the storm and
night, as if it reveals the weaknesses the narrator is trying to hide
from: The pain and fear outside his personal dream sphere.
 The narrator expresses the value he puts on his fantasies by
elevating the dreams to a state of apotheosis: ―That holy dream —
that holy dream‖. The repetition, which primarily functions to
emphasize the importance, also gives us a glimpse of the
desperate undercurrent of the poem. The repetition gives the
impression that the narrator is desperately trying to cling on to
that elusive dream world. And, with the last two lines of the
poem, admitting that he is doomed to failure, and that the ―real
world‖ has caught up with him.

 In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

 The most interesting bit in this poem, for me, is in these lines
- "Now, whether it were really so, I never could be sure;" I
wonder, why does the poet say this when the entire "May
marrying June" sequence would appear fantastic enough to
most of us? Is the section above these lines to be taken as
'factual reporting', and the section from these lines onwards
as a 'fancy'? "But Fancy, still, will sometimes deem Her fond
creation true." Other than that, I find that the language is
simple; the rhyming makes it very hummable. The
descriptions are very vivid, as if she stood there and she saw
a wedding. It is as if she is pointing towards the greens in
spring and telling you their history (like someone would
point at an ancient palace and say "here is where that king
lived"). And then she turns towards you with her eyes wide
and tells you something you are never going to believe (and
that someone then turns to you and says "no one really
knows - but people still hear sounds on moonlit nights...").

 On a sunny brae, alone I lay  Now, whether it were really so,
One summer afternoon; I never could be sure;
It was the marriage-time of May But as in fit of peevish woe,
With her young lover, June. I stretched me on the moor.
From her mother's heart, seemed loath to part  A thousand thousand gleaming fires
That queen of bridal charms, Seemed kindling in the air;
But her father smiled on the fairest child A thousand thousand silvery lyres
He ever held in his arms. Resounded far and near:
The trees did wave their plumy crests, Methought, the very breath I breathed
The glad birds caroled clear; Was full of sparks divine,
And I, of all the wedding guests, And all my heather-couch was wreathed
Was only sullen there! By that celestial shine!
There was not one, but wished to shun And, while the wide earth echoing rung
My aspect void of cheer; To their strange minstrelsy,
The very grey rocks, looking on, The little glittering spirits sung,
Asked, "What do you here?" Or seemed to sing, to me.
And I could utter no reply; "O mortal! mortal! let them die;
In sooth, I did not know Let time and tears destroy,
Why I had brought a clouded eye That we may overflow the sky
To greet the general glow. With universal joy!
So, resting on a heathy bank, Let grief distract the sufferer's breast,
I took my heart to me; And night obscure his way;
And we together sadly sank They hasten him to endless rest,
Into a reverie. And everlasting day.
We thought, "When winter comes again, To thee the world is like a tomb,
Where will these bright things be? A desert's naked shore;
All vanished, like a vision vain, To us, in unimagined bloom,
An unreal mockery! It brightens more and more!
The birds that now so blithely sing, And could we lift the veil, and give
Through deserts, frozen dry, One brief glimpse to thine eye,
Poor spectres of the perished spring, Thou wouldst rejoice for those that live,
In famished troops, will fly. Because they live to die."
And why should we be glad at all? The music ceased; the noonday dream,
The leaf is hardly green, Like dream of night, withdrew;
Before a token of its fall But Fancy, still, will sometimes deem
Is on the surface seen!" Her fond creation true.

 http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/thematic_
poems/dream_poems.html
 http://www.wikipedia.org/
 http://www.poemhunter.com/classics/
 http://www.poemhunter.com/edgar-allan-
poe/
 http://www.poetry-
archive.com/b/blake_william.html

A dedication to my mother

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