A Dream Within a Dream (2010), for SATB choir

Duration: 4:30

Text: Edgar Allan Poe (public domain)

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?

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First Performance: April 14th, 2011, New Music New Haven

 Trinity Lutheran Church, New Haven, CT

 Yale Camerata; Christoph Schlechter, conductor

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Recording: February 8th, 2010

 Marquand Chapel, Yale University, New Haven, CT

 Yale Schola Cantorum; Dennis Schrock, conductor