Dreams

The central theme of maintaining hope appears in the plea, “Hold fast to dreams” (Lines 1, 5). As dreams symbolize hope, people must keep them. The repeated statement is the only positive part of the poem—it involves preserving aspirations. The other six lines are negative: They detail the cruel consequences of not having aspirations—of losing dreams, thus losing hope.

The speaker highlights the urgency of maintaining hope not by showing the reader what happens when hope stays and flourishes (positive) but by illustrating what occurs when a person does not have hope in their life (negative). It’s as if the speaker wants to scare the reader into making an extra effort to save their dreams. If the reader doesn’t hang on to their dreams, their life will be despondent—it will turn into a negative, unhappy image: Either a wounded bird that can’t fly or a frozen field that can’t grow anything. A life without hope is immobile, so the poem illustrates being similarly trapped in a gloomy situation.

The repeated line that starts Stanza 1 and Stanza 2 creates a bold image. The exhortation to hold on to dreams turns dreams into a tangible item, precious and valuable. Dreams represent hope, and hope has extraordinary value—thus, a person must hold it tight and keep it close as if it were a newborn child or an irreplaceable heirloom.