Title - Echo

• The Title 'Echo' symbolizes the enduring reverberation of memory and grief, suggesting that love, once experienced, leaves behind a haunting trace that resounds long after physical loss - Just as an echo repeats a sound that has already ceased, the speaker’s yearning is shaped by emotional remnants that refuse to be silenced - This interpretation reinforces the poem’s focus on how the past persists within the psyche, especially in dreams and mourning
• The Title 'Echo' can also be interpreted as a metaphor for spiritual communication, where the voice of the deceased echoes back through the veil of dreams and the afterlife - The speaker longs to “hear” and relive the presence of a lost love, as though their soul might still reverberate through ethereal channels - This reading aligns with Rossetti’s Christian spirituality and Victorian fascination with death, suggesting that echoes represent the soul’s gentle persistence in the world of the living
• The Title 'Echo' implies a cyclical, repetitive emotional experience, much like the recurrence of an echo itself - grief that endlessly returns, never allowing closure - Each invocation of “come” mimics the echoing nature of unresolved desire, as the speaker’s pleas mirror back without fulfilment - Thus, the title underscores the painful rhythm of hope and despair that characterizes mourning
• The Title 'Echo' and in Greek mythology, Echo was a nymph cursed by Hera to only repeat the last words spoken to her, after she distracted the goddess to protect Zeus’s affairs - Echo fell in love with Narcissus but was unable to declare her feelings, and after being rejected, she faded away until only her voice remained - Rossetti’s use of Echo draws from this myth to suggest the futility and pain of voiceless love - her speaker, like the nymph, is caught in a tragic loop of longing, able only to echo a love that can never be fully reciprocated or revived
• The Title 'Echo' subtly foreshadows the fading trajectory of the poem itself, mirroring how an echo gradually loses strength with each repetition until it vanishes - Just as the speaker’s voice grows softer - "speak low, lean low" - the emotional intensity dissipates, suggesting an acceptance, however reluctant, of separation and silence - This diminishing rhythm reflects the nature of an echo not as a permanent return, but as a transient impression of what once was, reinforcing the inevitability of loss and the impossibility of full resurrection through memory or dreams