Dreams Are Well but Waking’s Better

Dreams Are Well but Waking’s Better - meaning Summary

Dreams Versus Waking

This short lyric contrasts dreams with waking and argues that actual waking—whether at morning or at midnight anticipating dawn—is preferable to mere dreaming. The poem values the tangible promise of a real dawn over imagined or unfulfilled expectation. The second stanza sharpens this by comparing the hopeful guesswork of a robin-singing tree to a dawn that appears but fails to bring a true day. Dickinson emphasizes the moral or emotional superiority of concrete experience and genuine arrival over pleasant but empty surmise.