The Dream — Summary

Lola Ridge’s speaker is holding onto a vivid, golden dream—a memory of Sydney rising out of the bay, full of blue air, mist, and sunlight. She wants to pour that dream back into the day, as if the day were a container that could hold it. The remembered scene is almost hallucinatory: heavy blue air, domes in sulphurous mist, a sea still as a gray seal, then sun bursting gold over the city. But the present day won’t cooperate. It has become an overturned cup, empty and useless. The sun is no longer golden; it is a lump of red iron sinking into dirty green water. The final question—where shall I pour my dream?—captures the speaker’s frustration and loss. The mood is dreamy at first, then turns melancholy and disillusioned, as a beautiful vision has no place to go in the harsher light of reality.