central idea

Consider the theme of Remembrance as an Echo. Although Rossetti never uses the word "echo" in the poem itself, she uses literary techniques to invoke the idea of an echo on a more abstract level. In addition to linguistic techniques that approximate the experience of an echo, like in-line repetition, parallel structure, and anaphora (repeating the same word at the beginning of each new clause), Rossetti also describes memories in a way that makes them seem like a kind of psychic echo. In stanza 1, the speaker presents herself as longing in the middle of the night, calling upon memory to “come to me in the silence of the night;/come in the speaking silence of a dream,” much like an echo might come bouncing off of some surface. Yet the return of memory, like an echo, appears uncanny—both are extensions of one’s own experience, externalized and fed back to oneself. A memory, although encountered by the mind as something external like a video to be watched, is also generated by the mind itself; this prevents it from fulfilling the speaker in the way she wishes. Later in the poem, when it becomes clear that the speaker yearns for a lost lover, this dissatisfaction with memory becomes more potent: a memory, like an echo, does not embody an experience, but rather fades like sound bouncing off of bedroom walls, a disembodied lover whispering “in the speaking silence of the night.”