The Full Text of “Echo”
1Come to me in the silence of the night;
2Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
3Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
4As sunlight on a stream;
5Come back in tears,
6O memory, hope, love of finished years.
7Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
8Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
9Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
10Where thirsting longing eyes
11Watch the slow door
12That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
13Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
14My very life again though cold in death:
15Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
16Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
17Speak low, lean low,
18As long ago, my love, how long ago.
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“Echo” Introduction
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The speaker of Christina Rossetti's "Echo" begs their departed lover to visit them in dreams, where they can see their lover's face again and relive all their past happiness. But while dreaming about this person gives the speaker much-needed relief from the pain of loss, their insistence on living in dreams and memories causes them to feel like an "Echo"—as if they don't really exist in the present at all. Rossetti wrote "Echo" in 1854 and published it in her first poetry collection, A Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).
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“Echo” Summary
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Visit me at night, when it's quiet. Communicate with me using the soundless images of dreams. Let me see your tender, full cheeks and eyes that light up like water in sunlight. Let me feel you again in the form of tears, you who I remember from, and loved and hoped with during, years gone by.
A wonderful dream! Almost too wonderful. Both wonderful and terrible, because it should have ended with me waking up in heaven, where souls overflowing with love linger and come together, where yearning eyes are glued to the door that, once it lets someone in, doesn't let them out again.
Still, I want you to visit me in my dreams so that I can experience all those happy memories again, even though my heart is now frozen over with grief. Visit me in dreams so that I can match your heartbeat with mine, your breath with mine. Talk to me quietly, come closer, just as you once did, my dear, such a long time ago.
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“Echo” Themes
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Love, Loss, and Memory
"Echo" illustrates how memories of past love reverberate into the present. The speaker, mourning the loss of a beloved, wishes they could be permanently reunited with this person in the afterlife; until then, they have to make do with dreams and memories of the time they spent together. These metaphorical "echoes" aren't as vivid as the real thing, which happened "long ago," yet the speaker clings to them anyway. Loss, it seems, has made the speaker's memories feel like the only place worth living. And yet, in living in the past, the pome implies that the speaker sacrifices their joy and vitality in the present.
The speaker feels as if the best days of their life are over; all they want is to be reunited with a deceased lover who once made them happy. They dream of their beloved waiting for them in "Paradise," watching "the slow door" where people enter and never leave again. They imply that they long to be on the other side of that door, "Where souls brimful of love abide and meet." That is, they're ready to leave behind their mortal form so their spirit can join their lover's.
The speaker's desire to take refuge in "Echo[es]" of the past—dreams and memories of old love—suggests that their loss makes the present hard to bear. Indeed, the speaker describes themselves as "cold in death," even though it's their beloved who has died. Without the happiness their beloved brought them, life feels devoid of warmth, beauty, and meaning. The speaker lives only for those brief moments in sleep when they can dream of their lover's "soft rounded cheeks and eyes."
For this speaker, it's easier to cling to memories than move on. But this nostalgia leaves them feeling like an "Echo"—a faint remnant of who they once were. Only when the deceased returns in dreams can the speaker "give / Pulse for pulse, breath for breath." In other words, the speaker isn't really living their life anymore. When awake, they feel their vitality has diminished. Like an echo that only repeats a sound from the past, they simply replay the same memories over and over, growing weaker and fainter with time.
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Dreams as a Respite from Grief
"Echo" portrays certain dreams as a temporary respite from grief. The speaker pleads with their deceased lover to visit them in dreams at night. These dreams are "bitter sweet," however: they reunite the speaker with their lover, yet they're ultimately an illusion—and each time the speaker wakes, they experience the pain of parting all over again. Still, the poem implied, these dreams are better than nothing, since they let the speaker temporarily forget their loss and relive the happiest moments of their life. They momentarily soothe the ongoing pain of bereavement.
While the relief dreams provide can't last, the speaker's intense longing for them shows the value of even these fleeting moments of respite. The speaker describes their dreams of the beloved as "sweet," then "too sweet," then "too bitter sweet," suggesting that the joy of the dreams inevitably gives way to reality. Still, these moments are what the speaker looks forward to throughout the day; even a temporary reprieve from pain is better than none.
In dreams, the speaker can feel the "memory, hope, [and] love" of years gone by, which "Come back" in the form of "tears." These tears (shed by the speaker and/or beloved) signify both joy and sorrow: joy because the couple is temporarily reunited, sorrow because the dream must end. When their loved one arrives in dreams, the speaker is able to "live / [their] very life again." For as long as the dream lasts, the worst hasn't yet come to pass, and the speaker gets to feel the way they felt when they were young and in love. Of course, each dream ends with the speaker once again losing their love—waking to the knowledge that their love is in "Paradise," while they're still here on earth.
So the cycle continues, with one night "Echo[ing]" the next. The speaker looks eagerly forward to sleep, when they can connect with their missing loved one. They beg the beloved to appear "in the silence of the night" and "in the speaking silence of a dream." Only once the world is quiet and the demands of the day have been set aside can the speaker find solace for their grief. That the silence "speak[s]" suggests that their dreams are a kind of communion with the dead, a chance to exchange words they can never again speak in waking life.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Echo”
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Lines 1-2
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;In "Echo," the speaker addresses their deceased lover. Apostrophe (the device in which a speaker addresses someone who can't respond) creates an intimate tone, as though the reader were eavesdropping on a private conversation. This "conversation" is one-sided, though: the speaker begs their beloved to visit them in dreams, but of course receives no response.
The title, "Echo," might also subtly allude to the ancient Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus. Echo fell in love with Narcissus but couldn't speak to him, due to a curse that made her capable only of repeating others' words. This allusion helps reinforce the idea that the speaker's lover can't hear them. The title also suggests that whatever experiences this couple shares in "dream[s]" are mere echoes of a former love; they aren't real in themselves.
Given the title, it's no surprise that "Echo" is full of repetition from the first lines onward:
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;These lines contain both anaphora ("Come [...] Come") and grammatical parallelism. They also repeat the word "silence." The repetitions create an insistent tone, conveying the speaker's desperate desire to see their beloved again. The emphasis on "silence" also helps establish a hushed, eerie atmosphere. Yet the oxymoron "speaking silence" implies that the "dream[s]," while soundless, communicate intense emotion. They're the speaker's only opportunity to see their lover again, so they're a welcome respite from the day-to-day reality of grief.
Repetition adds to the musicality of these opening lines, as does alliteration ("silence," "speaking silence"). These sibilant /s/ sounds give the language a whispering, intimate quality. One can imagine the speaker waiting till the dead of night to say these words aloud. Muted /m/ and /n/ consonance ("Come," "silence," "night," "dream") also contributes to the hushed tone.
The poem creates music in other ways, too. Rossetti uses the stately, familiar meter known as iambic pentameter (five-beat lines that follow an unstressed-stressed rhythm: da-DUM, da-DUM). However, she occasionally varies the meter for emphasis. For example, she begins these first two lines with trochees (stressed-unstressed feet) rather than iambs (unstressed-stressed), accentuating the word "Come" and making the speaker's pleas sound more forceful:
Come to | me in | the si- | lence of | the night;
Come in | the spea- | king si- | lence of | a dream;The poem also follows an ABABCC rhyme scheme, which adds to its lyricism and emotional force. Together, these various sound effects create euphony: the poem is richly melodious and pleasing to read aloud.
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Lines 3-6
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
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Lines 7-9
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet; -
Lines 10-12
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more. -
Lines 13-16
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: -
Lines 17-18
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
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“Echo” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Repetition
"Echo" is full of repetition—fittingly enough, considering that an echo is itself a repetition!
The first stanza, for example, repeats the word "silence" (lines 1-2) and introduces the word "dream," which comes back as "dreams" in the third stanza. These repetitions create a hushed, ghostly atmosphere that hangs over the poem as a whole. They also highlight the fact that the beloved now exists only in silent dreams; the couple can no longer enjoy the normal interactions they once shared.
The first stanza also contains anaphora: the repetition of "Come" at the beginning of lines 1-3 and 5 (later echoed in lines 13 and 15). This anaphora creates an insistent, propulsive rhythm, pulling the reader into the poem and conveying the speaker's desperation to see their loved one.
The second stanza begins with diacope (the close repetition of "too") and epistrophe (the repetition of "sweet" at the end of successive phrases):
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Through these repetitions, the speaker seems to revise or correct themselves, complicating their initial description of the dream. What first seemed "sweet" becomes "too sweet," then "too bitter sweet," as the speaker wakes up and realizes they've been dreaming. The reunion with their lover was only an illusion, a fantasy too good to be true.
Anaphora also appears in the speaker's description of "Paradise" (lines 9-10):
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door [...]The insistent repetition again conveys yearning: heaven is "Where" the speaker longs to go in order to be with their lover.
Line 12, in the same stanza, contains polyptoton:
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
The speaker repeats the root word "let" in order to draw a simple contrast: the door of Paradise lets souls "in" but doesn't let them "out" again.
The final stanza also features various kinds of repetition. It echoes words like "come" and "dream"/"dreams" from earlier stanzas, keeping the poem's core ideas fresh in the reader's mind. Lines 13-14 contain another example of polyptoton ("live"/"life"), while line 16 contains diacope and parallelism: "Pulse for pulse, breath for breath."
Notice how most of these repeated words involve life and vitality. By emphasizing them, the speaker suggests that their life force is entwined with their lover's; in the lover's absence, they feel "cold in death." Similarly, the lover can live again only in the speaker's dreams, as though the speaker has the power to breathe life into them.
Finally, the last two lines of the poem contain diacope and epistrophe:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.The repetition here adds both rhythm and emphasis. Notice that "low" and "ago" form an internal rhyme, making these last lines even more musical than the rest of the poem. Ultimately, all this repetition drives home the idea that the speaker is stuck in the past, desperately clinging to the "Echo" of their former happiness.
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Caesura
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Alliteration
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Metaphor
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Apostrophe
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Allusion
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“Echo” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Brimful
- Abide
Brimful-
Filled to the brim or overflowing.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Echo”
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Form
"Echo" contains 18 lines arranged into three rhymed sestets (six-line stanzas). Each sestet begins with three longer (pentameter) lines, followed by two shorter lines and a final longer line.
The consistency of stanza length, line lengths, and rhyme scheme makes each stanza seem to "Echo" the one before, reinforcing the poem's main metaphor. Like an echo, the speaker is stuck repeating the past, unable to move forward in life. The poem's structure conveys this idea neatly and effectively. The harmonious stanzas also add to the poem's balance and beauty, which, in turn, reflects the beauty of the speaker's memories.
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Meter
"Echo" is mostly written in iambic pentameter, meaning that its lines generally contain five iambs (feet that follow an unstressed-stressed rhythm). However, Rossetti frequently swaps in other kinds of feet to add emphasis and variation. For instance, the first three lines are in iambic pentameter, but they all begin with trochees (stressed-unstressed):
Come to | me in | the sil- | ence of | the night;
Come in | the speak- | ing sil- | ence of | a dream
Come with | soft round- | ed cheeks | and eyes | as brightIambic pentameter gives these lines a pleasing, beautiful rhythm, while the opening trochees make them more emphatic: the speaker desperately wants to their loved one to come back in dreams.
The fourth and fifth lines of each stanza are written in iambic trimeter and dimeter, respectively. This means that instead of five iambs per line, they contain, respectively, three iambs and two iambs. When mashed together, these lines of trimeter and dimeter equal a single line of pentameter, so when the poem is read aloud, its rhythm sounds more consistent than it looks. Here's how this pattern plays out in lines 4 and 5:
As sun- | light on | a stream;
Come back | in tears,Note that line 5 begins with a strong spondee (two stressed syllables in a row), again emphasizing the speaker's desire for their beloved to return.
In fact, spondees tend to appear at strategic moments, as in line 6:
O mem- | ory, | hope, love | of fin- | ished years
Fittingly, the rhythm stresses and links two strong emotions: "hope" and "love." A similar effect occurs in line 16:
Pulse for | pulse, breath | for breath:
Here, only the third foot is an iamb. The first is a trochee, which again sounds propulsive and emphatic, and the second is a spondee, which ties together the words "pulse" and "breath." Linking them rhythmically suggests that, just as the pulse and breath are inseparable parts of life, the speaker still feels inseparable from their beloved. (Notice, too, how the phrase "Pulse for pulse" has a stressed-unstressed-stressed rhythm that sounds like a pulse!)
Rossetti's deft use of meter results in a beautiful, melodic poem whose rhythmic variations reinforce its imagery and ideas.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem follows a straightforward, consistent rhyme scheme: ABABCC DEDEFF GHGHII.
This pattern makes the poem musical and memorable, like a tragic love song about parted lovers. It's also fitting, of course, that a poem called "Echo" should rhyme, since rhyme words echo one another's sounds!
Most of the poem's rhymes are exact ("night"/"bright," "dream"/"stream," etc.), making its structure harmonious and easy to hear. In fact, there's only one slant rhyme, in lines 8 and 10: "Paradise"/"eyes." This slightly imperfect rhyme draws subtle attention, perhaps, to the speaker's disappointment about not waking up in heaven with their beloved.
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“Echo” Speaker
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The speaker of "Echo" is someone whose beloved died, seemingly "long ago." Yet despite the time that's passed, the speaker hasn't let go of this person and moved on with their life. Instead, they look forward to sleep each night, when they get the chance to see this person and re-experience the love and happiness they felt with them.
The poem doesn't reveal any personal information about the speaker, such as their age, gender, race, location, etc. That the speaker could be anyone, at any point in their life, makes the poem all the more relatable. The speaker's yearning to wake up in "Paradise," though, does suggest that they're religious; Rossetti herself was a devout Anglo-Catholic.
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“Echo” Setting
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The poem doesn't have a physical setting; it takes place entirely in the speaker's thoughts. The speaker is anticipating the arrival of "night," when their departed loved one will return to them in the "silence" of dreams.
The lack of a clear setting helps create the poem's dreamlike atmosphere. It's as if the speaker no longer fully exists in the present, because they're too caught up in happy memories and fantasies. Indeed, the only place the poem describes is heaven: the "Paradise" where lost souls meet, and where the speaker hopes to find their lover after death. Otherwise, the speaker dwells in the "memory, hope, love of finished years."
These details reinforce the idea that the speaker has become an "Echo" of their former self. If their memories are the only place worth living, then it's their real life that has become a sort of terrible dream.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Echo”
Literary Context
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was an important Victorian poet. The daughter of an artistic Italian family, Rossetti was born in England and began her career young; she wrote "Song (When I am dead, my dearest)" when she was only 18 and "Remember" when she was 19. She wrote "Echo" in 1854, when she was 24 years old. All three poems appeared in her first commercially printed poetry collection, The Goblin Market and Other Poems, in 1862. (An earlier volume of her verses had been privately printed.)
Many of Rossetti's poems focus on mortality, religious devotion, and the complexities of women’s lives in a conservative Victorian society. She has often been compared to her predecessor Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose work shares some similarities with Rossetti's. However, Rossetti’s work is generally considered more plainspoken and less political in its language and ideas. Her other influences include Dante and Petrarch (her father’s ties to Italy meant that she was well-schooled in Italian forms such as the Petrarchan sonnet), the Bible, and fairy tales and folklore.
Rossetti wrote more than a dozen books in her lifetime. Feminist scholarship sparked a resurgence of critical interest in her work towards the end of the 20th century. Part of her mass appeal stems from what her brother, the famed Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, described as her talent for “artless art”—that is, art that appears simple and uncontrived on the surface, but is effective, moving, and nuanced when readers dig deeper.
Historical Context
Rossetti lived in a world defined by drastic, revolutionary change and by the conservative backlash that followed.
England reinvented itself under Queen Victoria, cementing its status as the center of the world's most powerful empire. Even as this period ushered in a great deal of innovation and expansion (often through colonial violence), it saw a return to traditional family values. English women of the "Victorian age" were expected to conform to strict expectations regarding everything from education to sexuality and marriage. Christian piety was the norm in public life (and in literature, too; notice the description of "Paradise" in lines 8-12 here). In spite of—or, perhaps, in reaction to—these restrictive norms, female writers such as Rossetti began to write about (and receive popular and critical recognition for) their own lives, affirming the significance of women’s experiences.
Rossetti's work was part of a tide of bold and moving poetry and fiction by Victorian women. Charlotte and Emily Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are only a few of the writers whose work achieved contemporary recognition against the odds.
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More “Echo” Resources
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External Resources
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A Recording of the Poem — Listen to the poem read aloud by poet Arthur L. Wood.
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The Poet's Life and Work — Read a Poetry Foundation biography of Rossetti.
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An Early Printing of Goblin Market — Look through scans of an early edition of Rossetti's collection Goblin Market, in which this poem originally appeared.
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Christina Rossetti among the Pre-Raphaelites — Explore the artistic and literary context in which Christina Rossetti worked.
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The Myth of Echo and Narcissus — Learn about the Greek myth the poem alludes to.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Christina Rossetti
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