by Edgar Allan Poe
Published 1827
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A dark unfathom’d tide
Of interminable pride—
A mystery, and a dream,
Should my early life seem;
I say that dream was fraught
With a wild, and waking thought
Of beings that have been,
Which my spirit hath not seen,
Had I let them pass me by,
With a dreaming eye!
Let none of earth inherit
That vision on my spirit;
Those thoughts I would controul,
As a spell upon his soul:
For that bright hope at last
And that light time have past,
And my worldly rest hath gone
With a sight as it pass’d on,
I care not tho’ it perish
With a thought I then did cherish.
“Imitation,” one of many poems by Edgar Allan Poe, was published in 1827. The poem was later revised and became “A Dream Within a Dream.”
