Dream-Land  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Edgar Allan Poe was a representative of the darker strains of American Romanticism

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First published in the June 1844 issue of Graham's Magazine, "Dream-Land" (also called "Dreamland") was the only poem Poe published that year. It was quickly republished in a June 1845 edition of the Broadway Journal.

This lyric poem consists of five stanzas, with the first and last being nearly identical. The dream-voyager arrives in a place beyond time and space and decides to stay there. This place is odd yet majestic, with "mountains toppling evermore into seas without a shore." Even so, it is a "peaceful, soothing region" and is a hidden treasure like El Dorado. Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn called it "one of [Poe's] finest creations", with each phrase contributing to one effect: a human traveler wandering between life and death.

The seventh line of the poem is typically pushed slightly to the left of the other lines' indentation.