“Echo” Summary

“Echo” Themes

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  Love, Loss, and Memory

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• 

  Dreams as a Respite from Grief

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Echo”

• Lines 1-2

  Come to me in the silence of the night;
  Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

  

  

  

  

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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;

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 10-12

  Where thirsting longing eyes
  Watch the slow door
  That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

  

  

  

  

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• 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:

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 17-18

  Speak low, lean low,
  As long ago, my love, how long ago.

  

  

  

  

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“Echo” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Repetition

  

  

  

  

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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

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Echo”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“Echo” Speaker

“Echo” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “Echo”

More “Echo” Resources

• External Resources

  • A Recording of the Poem — Listen to the poem read aloud by poet Arthur L. Wood. 

  • The Poet's Life and Work — Read a Poetry Foundation biography of Rossetti. 

  • 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.

  • Christina Rossetti among the Pre-Raphaelites — Explore the artistic and literary context in which Christina Rossetti worked.  

  • The Myth of Echo and Narcissus — Learn about the Greek myth the poem alludes to.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Christina Rossetti

  • A Birthday

  • An Apple Gathering

  • At Home

  • Babylon the Great

  • Cousin Kate

  • From the Antique

  • Good Friday

  • In an Artist's Studio

  • In the Round Tower at Jhansi, June 8, 1857 (Indian Mutiny)

  • Maude Clare

  • No, Thank You, John

  • Piteous my rhyme is

  • Remember

  • Shut Out

  • Sister Maude

  • Soeur Louise de la Miséricorde

  • Some ladies dress in muslin full and white

  • Song (When I am dead, my dearest)

  • Twice

  • Up-Hill

  • Winter: My Secret