In the speaker’s dream, he lies beside someone he loves, only to realize that both of them are dead. Reaching out, he touches the other person’s lips and finds them decayed and wasted, and the horror is so sharp that his soul screams into the darkness. The poem creates a suffocating, intimate mood, mixing closeness with fear and grief. Even after waking, the ache stays in his bones and heart. He doesn’t want to sit with that feeling; he craves noise, crowds, laughter, anything alive enough to push the nightmare away. It’s a poem about how a dream of losing someone to death can cling to you long after your eyes open, and how desperately you want ordinary life to drown it out.
The Dream — Summary
I lay by your side last night. By you, in my dreams, I felt the damp of the grave. I was dead with you-- And my bones still ache with Death. For my hand went out and I touched your lips, And I found them fallen away, Wasted and lost! Those lips once warm with life Were eaten and gone! And my soul screamed out in the dark At the intimate blackness of Death. And then I arose from the dead And returned to the day; And my bones and my heart still ache with it all, And I hunger to hear the relieving babble of life, The crowd in the hurrying street, The tumult and laughter and talk, To make me forget!