Lyric Poem · Dreams & Sleep
Imitation
1A dark unfathomed tide
2Of interminable pride —
3A mystery, and a dream,
4Should my early life seem;
5I say that dream was fraught
6With a wild and waking thought
7Of beings that have been,
8Which my spirit hath not seen,
9Had I let them pass me by,
10With a dreaming eye!
11Let none of earth inherit
12That vision on my spirit;
13Those thoughts I would control,
14As a spell upon his soul:
15For that bright hope at last
16And that light time have past,
17And my wordly rest hath gone
18With a sigh as it passed on:
19I care not though it perish
20With a thought I then did cherish.
Full-text availability follows the United States display decision recorded below; status can differ elsewhere.
“Imitation” by Edgar Allan Poe — quilloak.com/poems/imitation
Quick facts
- Poem
- Imitation
- Poet
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Length
- 20 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Dreams & Sleep, Sad, Hope
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 20 lines · one 20-line stanza
- Line length
- Lines run 6-7 syllables (median 7). No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849
- Source record
- PoetryDBImitation by edgar-allan-poe, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 9e2082f94a3c2f36…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.