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 

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? 

- Edgar Allan Poe 

Perception

It was almost midnight. The crown prince and his adviser took a break from the paperwork to get fresh air.

Adviser commented - “Ah, so that’s what the moon looks like from the palace.”  The Prince scoffs that the moon is the same , not seeing any difference.

Adviser explained that when he was young, he lived with a theater group. He traveled with his performance troupe extensively, his home was on wheels. He’d thought that the moon looked different in every region—full in one area, crescent-shaped in another and some regions do not have a moon. He was not at the same place long enough to realize that moon changes everyday, and is same everywhere. Laughing at his childhood foible, he asks if the prince has ever entertained totally wrong ideas as a child? , to which the Prince said -

"I was even more foolish than you. When I was a child, I thought this palace was the whole world. I was born and bought up in the east wing of the palace, roaming to west quarters was an adventure for me. My naive head couldn't imagine that there can be other people and many other things outside these walls."