Oníricas (3) - Variações sobre a "questão borboleta"

Odile Rédon, Les yeux clos
1890 (190 Kb); óleo sobre tela montada em cartão, 44 x 36 cm (17 3/8 x 14 1/4 in); Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Is this love reality
or a dream?
I cannot know,
when both reality and dreams
exist without truly existing.

Ono no Komachi, The Ink Dark Moon, op. cit., p.14.

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
Throngh my fingers to the deep
While I weep --- while I weep!
O God! Can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream.

Edgar Alan Poe