Echo

Form

• Lyric poetry → traditionally sung and absence of narrative

• ABABCC rhyme scheme

• Incremental repetition

• 1st line in each stanza has same number of syllables, 2nd and 3rd etc

“My love”

No personal pronoun in poem to other person

When?

Written in 1854, when her father died

Myth of Echo

Cursed to only say last words anyone said

Fell in love with Narcissus, who died when he fell in love with himself

Echo mourned and died, leaving voice behind

Echo

Repetition throughout poem. Word echo not found, but an echo of the words said. Alone

Marxist interpretation

Echo is ongoing as is hegemony and myth of meritocracy. Dominant ideology is power of love

Feminist interpretation

Link to Misericorde. Patriarchal society where he still has power over her

Women invest more emotionally, more to lose unfulfilling

Simone de Beauvoir

Feminist who was French

Said women are perceived based in terms of their relationships with men

Pre-Raphaelite

Vivid, imagery, natural, dreamlike, idyllic sense

‘Echo’

• Unattainable. All around but unable to be seen. Trace of the original

• Echo fades with each bounce. Becomes disconnected from her lover

• No certainty. Emptiness

“Come”

Repeated x4. Incremental repetition. Active sense of movement like an echo. Sense of urgency

“Speaking silence”

Oxymoron. Finding comfort

“How sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet”

• Pain of memory

• Incremental repetition. Meaning of ‘sweet’ changes each time. Becomes too much too handle. Desire

• Oxymoron. Balance between 2 things

“Paradise”

Heaven. ‘Shut Out’. Death is not finality but rather a new beginning

“Souls brimful of love abide and meet”

Sense of life but also heaven. Overflowing of love contrasting to the yearning of seeing other

Religious. Gospel of John. Connection with paradise

“Speak low, lean low”

Commas slow down the pace. Fading to an end. Repetition of “low”

“Pulse for pulse, breath for breath”

Savour each moment of life. Living to the fullest → “soft-rounded cheeks” + “eyes as bright as sunlight on a stream”