Echo (2)

CONTEXT: 

-          Rossetti’s religious beliefs, including belief in the afterlife

-          Her personal life – love and family

-          In the same year as this was published, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote A Musical Instrument, telling the story of the Greek god Pan who “hacked and hewed” an instrument into shape from a reed. The wider suggestion is that poetry, like the musical instrument, comes essentially from a place of suffering or deep feeling that needs expressing. 

-          In Greek myth, “Echo” was a nymph who helped Zeus commit adultery by distracting his wife, Hera. Once Hera found out, she made her unable to speak except to repeat someone else’s last words. Echo fell in love with Narcissus but as she could only echo him, he rejected her and she pined away until only her voice remained. 

INTERPRETATION / ANALYSIS

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.

In many ways this is a partner poem to Song, from the perspective of a speaker after a loved one’s death. The repeated imperative “come” sounds more like a plea every time it’s repeated, rather than an instruction – this is a poem of longing, and despair. The speaker acknowledges the “silence of the night”, the “silence of a dream” – the only way they will see their loved one again. Rossetti’s oxymoron “speaking silence” also highlights the dreamlike quality here, where two people can communicate without words. The references to “night” and “dream” could be taken as more sexualized or passionate, but given the rest of the poem this seems less likely. 

The “love of finished years”, though, implies that the loved one is older – their love was ended, maybe. The triadic structure of “memory, hope, love” wraps together everything the speaker wants: to experience that relationship once again. 

There’s a question as to who this is about – it could read as a love returning from the grave to comfort their loved one. But the “soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright/as sunlight on a stream” suggests someone younger, perhaps – a sister or child, maybe. 

Especially given the meaning of “Echo” – the repeated sound – it’s unsurprising that sound plays an incredibly important part in this poem; this begins in the first stanza with the repetition of “come” and the sibilance of “silence...speaking silence…sunlight on a stream”, a soft, gentle repeated sound. 

O 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 exclamative “o dream” is filled with longing and regret; repetition of “sweet” with its changes until it becomes “bittersweet” as the speaker realises they are not waking in “Paradise”, but instead are merely in a dream, not seeing their loved one again after all. 

Here, too, is a suggestion of passion – the souls “abide and meet” with “thirsting longing eyes”, the active verbs highlighting the speaker’s desperation to see this person again. That their “souls” meet again reminds us of the dreamlike quality of this encounter, but also the religious possibilities -a soul sent from heaven to comfort, perhaps. Here the dominant sounds are soft “w”s and “l”s, a gentle soft sound, pleading almost, or breathless. 

The short line “watch the slow door” creates a sense of hesitation and anticipation before it opens. The door is a frequent image in Rossetti’s poetry; here it is “slow”, and watched – “that opening, letting in, lets out no more” – the door to heaven opens only one way and cannot let the loved one out.

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:

Speak low, lean low

As long ago, my love, how long ago.

Echoing the beginning “Come in the speaking silence of a dream”, Rossetti uses the oxymoron of living life after death, drawing on religious understandings of the afterlife to find comfort. Again, though, this might also sound a more passionate dream, particularly with the “pulse for pulse, breath for breath”, lovers matching one another’s very physical actions, the physicality needed for life.

                 

STRUCTURE AND FORM

•       Lyric – the lyric was originally Ancient Greek, using intensely musical language and rhythm, focusing on emotion rather than narrative – conveying feeling above all else. Originally they were written to be sung, accompanied by a lyre, but in the Victorian era it became a more printed form. 

•       Repetition – using the concept of the “echo”, Rossetti uses a variety of repetition techniques to emphasize her language, including: Anaphora (repeating at the beginning of the phrase) –“come”; Alliteration (words beginning with the same sound) – “letting in lets out”, “whose/where/watch“; Sibilance “speaking silence, sunlight on a stream”; Parallelisms (repeated phrasing structues): “Pulse for pulse, breath for breath” 

•       Rhyme scheme – each stanza has an ababcc rhyme scheme, suggesting the movement of the speaker’s feelings. It’s relatively fragmented; the rhymes don’t continue through the stanzas. Some rhymes emphasize their opposites – “night/bright”, “death/breath” to signify the essential conflict here of life and death. “Paradise/eyes” in the second stanza is more of a half-rhyme signalling a moment of doubt when the speaker realises fully that the dream is not enough. 

•       Trochees are used in the first three lines (“come to, come in, come with,” to convey urgency and passion.

•      

Metre – the “Pulse for pulse, breath for breath” is suddenly interrupted trochees, and highlights the physicality of the language, as well as the breathlessness of the speaker In this moment. 

•       Motif of water is used – the stream, tears, thirsting – but it’s n unusually mournful image (water is often used to signify life) so perhaps Rossetti is drawing on more Greek imagery of the River Styx or Lethe – two of the rivers used to cross into the after-world, and after crossing Lethe, all memory is dissipated.

CONNECTIONS

The afterlife: Twice; Remember: Song; Shut Out

Love: Remember; No Thank You John; 

Longing: Remember; Song; Shut Out; From the Antique

Silence: Winter: My Secret; Shut Out; Goblin Market;

Echo; Remember