Echo (poetry by Christina Rossetti)

I think I like this idea of putting up more poetry to share with you all 🙂

I started off yesterday with Pablo Neruda’s “I Like for You to be Still”, featured in the movie Il Postino (The Postman) and read by Glenn Close. This one is “Echo” by Christina Rossetti, an English poet of Italian descent who lived from 1830 to 1894. The poem speaks of losing a loved one to death, and keeping the connection alive only in the realm of dreams. (Read some analysis here)

Echo

Christina Rossetti

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 and love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter-sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brim-full 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.