Echo by Christina Georgina Rossetti
The speaker asks a love from long ago to return in nighttime dreams. Calling a dream both sweet and bitter, the speaker imagines loving souls meeting in Paradise and longs to relive the closeness of the past.
By Christina Georgina Rossetti · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Love Poetry · 198 words
First lines
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.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, / Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, / Where souls brimful of love abide and meet; / Where thirsting longing eyes / Watch the slow door / That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
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!
Genres
- Lyric Poetry — Three rhymed stanzas voice a speaker's intimate plea for reunion through dreams.
- Love Poetry — The speaker addresses a remembered love and longs to recover their shared closeness.
Tags
dreams · longing · remembered love · memory · Paradise
What this Textopian page supports
Echo is listed on Textopian as a poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Christina Georgina Rossetti
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Love Poetry
- Length: 198 words
- Structure: 1 section, 3 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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