Echo Summary

In "Echo," Christina Rossetti uses literary devices like oxymoron, anaphora, and alliteration to present a speaker being consumed by her longing for a past memory, likely that of a lost love. As a three-stanza sextilla, “Echo” generates a narrative, with the speaker first calling upon a failing memory, then seeking relief in dreams, and then finally giving into a death-like sleep in a bid to remain immersed in a replay of her past life. "Echo's" emotional power hits most strongly when one realizes that the speaker yearns so desperately for her lost love, whom has likely passed on. In a substitutive move in both form and content, memories and dreams stand in her for the speaker's love, and in so doing, replace reality. Thus, “Echo” stands as one of Christina Rossetti’s most potent explorations of longing, loss, memory, and death.