Victorian Verse - Echo - Christina Rossetti

The title of the poem gives a clue as to the ideas in the poem.  Echo was a nymph who lived on Mt Cithaeron, where Zeus was in the habit of consorting with other nymphs, being a serial womaniser.  His wife, Hera, became jealous and arrived to catch him in the act.  However, Echo distracted her by constantly talking.  When Juno realised the nymph's treachery, she condemned her to being unable to speak, except for the last few words of those spoken to her.  The "echo" in the poem is from a dead soul to one still living whom the poet craves would "Come back".  The poem conveys an anguished sense of loss, and Rossetti may also be drawing on the story of Echo after she is cursed by Hera.  Echo falls in love with a beautiful mortal, Narcissus, but is unable to tell him of her love.  She can only echo the ends of his words.  He rejects her, falling in love with his own reflection in a stream and being turned into the white flower of the same name.  The poet uses water imagery throughout.  Echoes, in reality, call back the words spoken by the listener and there is a strong identification of the lost love with the poet, as if they were two souls in one body – “My very life again”.

There is another strong influence at work in this poem.  Rossetti was familiar with the works of Dante Alighieri, an Italian poet of the late 13^th century.  In his masterpiece, "La Divina Commedia", the poet travels to the Underworld, led by the Roman poet, Virgil.  Whilst there, he meets his beloved, Beatrice, who leads him to the gates of Paradise.  Beatrice was a real woman whom Dante first knew as a child, but only met on an very few occasions, both he and she marrying others.  She died at the age of 24 – the age at which Rossetti wrote this poem.  

Rossetti was innovative in her use of varied metre to expand the emotional range of her verse, a feature which was met with some puzzlement by her contemporary critics, used to the regular rhythm and rhyme of mainstream Victorian verse. The poem is written in iambic pentametre, with the 4^th and 5^th lines between them creating a full line.  The initial iamb is inverted to form a trochee (Tum-ti rather than Ti-Tum) which, together with the anaphora on “Come”, gives the poem its pleading tone.  

Come to me in the silence of the night;

                Come in the speaking silence of a dream;

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.

The poet pleads for the lover to return from the dead and speak to (her) in (her) dreams.  The gender of both speaker and lover is indeterminate – “rounded cheeks” is perhaps more suggestive of a woman or a very young man.  The poet uses an oxymoron to express the paradox of dreams – “speaking silence”.  Dreams are silent and yet the dreamer can clearly hear voices – again like an echo, which is not real in itself.  The image of “sunlight on a stream” suggests the sparkle of sunlight on water, emphasised by the alliteration.  This vibrant image shifts as the glitter turns to that of “tears”.  Whether they are the tears of the poet or the lovers is deliberately ambiguous, showing mutual sorrow at parting.  The longed-for visitor brings with it “memory, hope, love” which were promises when alive, but are now “finished”.  The rhyme scheme (ababcc) also plays on opposing themes:  “night/bright”, “dream/stream”.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,

                Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,

Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;

                Where thirsting longing eyes

                Watch the slow door

That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

The poet wakes up as the dream fades.  The sense of desolation , being cheated by the dream, is expressed by the repeated “sweet” as it moves from “how sweet” (it is real) to “too sweet (it cannot be real) to the oxymoron “bitter sweet” (it is not real, and painful, but better than nothing).  The reuniting of the loved ones should have ended in heaven, with her dying.  In Paradise is where those parted by death meet and live together again.  The water imagery continues with “brimfull”, meaning a vessel full of water about to overflow, in contrast to the desolate place where they are apart and are parched, “thirsting” for one another.  The parted souls wait by the Gates of Paradise for them to open and allow their loved ones through into heaven, from which they never return.  There is no need for “echoes”. 

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live

                My very life again tho’ cold in death:

Come back to me in dreams, that I may give

                Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:

                Speak low, lean low,

As long ago, my love, how long ago.

In spite of the pain of parting on awakening, the poet still longs for the loved one to come to (her) in (her) dreams, as only then is she able to relive the life that they enjoyed together, even though it is but a cold “echo” of that life.  In her dreams, the beloved and (she) can be together as one again, as they used to be in life.

The ideas are similar to those in “Remember me”, with the fusion of life and death, as if there is only a thin veil between the two and that in dreams and memory you can pass between the two, recapturing not just the emotional intensity of the relationship but the physical intimacy as well.