Rossetti – Echo
Initial Responses Development of ideas and interpretations
(red)
Meaning / Ideas / Themes constructed and explored Meaning / Ideas / Themes constructed and
by the poet explored by the poet
- regret of lost love, made impossible by Rossetti’s - opens with instructions for someone to visit
decision to dedicate her life to faith her in her dreams and recalls the beauty of
their face
- Dreaming of her love, wishes it could have been
endured by beginning in Paradise - the end of the first stanza → reveals that
this person is from her past and she is
- uncertain voice shifts to a definitive voice- confirms trying to reconnect with a former love in
her decision is final and irreversible her memories
- the tension between faith and earthly temptation- - recalls how she felt while in love and
but does not contemplate prioritising earthly love laments that she didn’t experience this
over faith feeling in heaven where it would have a
- love and loss seem inextricably linked- Rossetti permanence impossible on earth
prioritises faith and divinity over earthly fulfilment, - then returns to the idea that she wants to
loss is inevitable (engagement w James Collinson) relive this earthly love in her dreams, but
expands to say that this memory is the only
thing giving her life any meaning
- uncertain voice- asking that memory, hope
and love would come back to the speaker in
‘tears’ expresses a wish to return, despite
the pain
- disillusionment when a ‘sweet’ dream was
experienced, the speaker did not awaken in
‘Paradise’ but in reality→ sense of
desolation and being cheated by the dream
- complexity of the emotions towards her
lover/ vs the faith that governs the actions
of the speaker, committed to divine
fulfilment
- gender of the speaker= indeterminate
though ‘rounded cheeks’ suggestive of a
woman/ a very young man
- 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
- 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
Use of form Use of form
- lyric poem (concern with exploring human - echoes seem to fade in the final stanza- less
emotion) constant repetition- the fading of memories
perhaps?
- rhyme scheme= regular throughout (ABABCC)-->
perhaps mirrors her sense of deflated passion that
is based on acceptance
- continual repetition within and across each stanza,
‘Come’, ‘Where’- literal echoes throughout the
poem
Use of structural devices (include key terms) Use of structural devices
- use of repetition- structure reflects the creation of - no rhymes are carried from one verse to
an echo→ desire and yearning the next- contributes to the idea of
movement and change
- internal repetition, ‘sweet’ reinforce the intensity
of the speaker's emotions - use of rhyme to combine words of
conflicting meaning- ‘night’,’bright’;
- anaphora in ‘Come’ perhaps used to portray a ‘death’, ‘breath’- draws attention to the
sense of suppressed passion in its repeated stress, instability of the boundary between life and
and ‘Where’ to convey the loss the speaker is death, upon which Rossetti is focused
confronted with
- variations in metre throughout echo reflect
- poem= written in iambic pentameter (with fourth the emotional changes the speaker's
and fifth lines between them creating a full line) experiences- opening trochees, ‘Come to’,
- initial iamb is then inverted to form a trochee ‘Come in’, ‘Come with’- convey passion and
(Tum- ti rather than Ti-tum)--> together with urgency
anaphora provides a pleading tone - strong beat in the line ‘Pulse for pulse,
- first line ‘Come to me in the silence of the night’- breath for breath’- perhaps the breathing
shift from trochee to iambic the speaker wishes to hear from her lover-
stress falls on the repeated consonants ‘p’
- ‘Watch the slow door’ shift to dimeter- meter and ‘b’- recalls the living, not the dead
changes and shifts- slows down action- almost
mimetic in the action of the ‘slow door’
- ‘yet’- antistrophe- shift in tone - combination of long and short line lengths-
visual wave-like effect on the page
- antistrophe breaking first and second
Initial Responses Development of ideas and interpretations
(red)
Meaning / Ideas / Themes constructed and explored Meaning / Ideas / Themes constructed and
by the poet explored by the poet
- regret of lost love, made impossible by Rossetti’s - opens with instructions for someone to visit
decision to dedicate her life to faith her in her dreams and recalls the beauty of
their face
- Dreaming of her love, wishes it could have been
endured by beginning in Paradise - the end of the first stanza → reveals that
this person is from her past and she is
- uncertain voice shifts to a definitive voice- confirms trying to reconnect with a former love in
her decision is final and irreversible her memories
- the tension between faith and earthly temptation- - recalls how she felt while in love and
but does not contemplate prioritising earthly love laments that she didn’t experience this
over faith feeling in heaven where it would have a
- love and loss seem inextricably linked- Rossetti permanence impossible on earth
prioritises faith and divinity over earthly fulfilment, - then returns to the idea that she wants to
loss is inevitable (engagement w James Collinson) relive this earthly love in her dreams, but
expands to say that this memory is the only
thing giving her life any meaning
- uncertain voice- asking that memory, hope
and love would come back to the speaker in
‘tears’ expresses a wish to return, despite
the pain
- disillusionment when a ‘sweet’ dream was
experienced, the speaker did not awaken in
‘Paradise’ but in reality→ sense of
desolation and being cheated by the dream
- complexity of the emotions towards her
lover/ vs the faith that governs the actions
of the speaker, committed to divine
fulfilment
- gender of the speaker= indeterminate
though ‘rounded cheeks’ suggestive of a
woman/ a very young man
- 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
- 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
Use of form Use of form
- lyric poem (concern with exploring human - echoes seem to fade in the final stanza- less
emotion) constant repetition- the fading of memories
perhaps?
- rhyme scheme= regular throughout (ABABCC)-->
perhaps mirrors her sense of deflated passion that
is based on acceptance
- continual repetition within and across each stanza,
‘Come’, ‘Where’- literal echoes throughout the
poem
Use of structural devices (include key terms) Use of structural devices
- use of repetition- structure reflects the creation of - no rhymes are carried from one verse to
an echo→ desire and yearning the next- contributes to the idea of
movement and change
- internal repetition, ‘sweet’ reinforce the intensity
of the speaker's emotions - use of rhyme to combine words of
conflicting meaning- ‘night’,’bright’;
- anaphora in ‘Come’ perhaps used to portray a ‘death’, ‘breath’- draws attention to the
sense of suppressed passion in its repeated stress, instability of the boundary between life and
and ‘Where’ to convey the loss the speaker is death, upon which Rossetti is focused
confronted with
- variations in metre throughout echo reflect
- poem= written in iambic pentameter (with fourth the emotional changes the speaker's
and fifth lines between them creating a full line) experiences- opening trochees, ‘Come to’,
- initial iamb is then inverted to form a trochee ‘Come in’, ‘Come with’- convey passion and
(Tum- ti rather than Ti-tum)--> together with urgency
anaphora provides a pleading tone - strong beat in the line ‘Pulse for pulse,
- first line ‘Come to me in the silence of the night’- breath for breath’- perhaps the breathing
shift from trochee to iambic the speaker wishes to hear from her lover-
stress falls on the repeated consonants ‘p’
- ‘Watch the slow door’ shift to dimeter- meter and ‘b’- recalls the living, not the dead
changes and shifts- slows down action- almost
mimetic in the action of the ‘slow door’
- ‘yet’- antistrophe- shift in tone - combination of long and short line lengths-
visual wave-like effect on the page
- antistrophe breaking first and second
