Echo - "Too sweet, too bitter sweet..."

• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Paradox ("Too sweet, too bitter sweet") highlights the complex nature of memory, especially in grief - where recalling a lost love brings both comfort and pain - The sweetness suggests cherished affection, while the bitterness underlines the ache of absence - This duality reflects how the speaker is caught between reliving joy and enduring sorrow
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Paradox ("Too sweet, too bitter sweet") captures the tension between the ideal love imagined in dreams and the devastating reality of separation - “Too sweet” evokes a love that borders on divine, but “too bitter sweet” grounds it in human suffering - Rossetti blurs the lines between spiritual transcendence and earthly despair, showing love as both salvation and torment
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Paradox ("Too sweet, too bitter sweet") mirrors the speaker’s yearning for reunion in a spiritual “Paradise” that is unreachable - The sweetness represents hope for eternal love, but bitterness intrudes as death bars access to that paradise - The contradiction evokes Christian notions of deferred salvation and the soul’s restless desire for divine union
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Paradox ("Too sweet, too bitter sweet") reflects the contrast between the dream world, where the beloved appears, and the waking world, where absence prevails - The dream is “too sweet” in its vividness, but “too bitter sweet” in the inevitable return to loss upon waking - Rossetti uses this to emphasize the cruel transience of dreams and the permanence of reality
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Paradox ("Too sweet, too bitter sweet") challenges Victorian romantic idealism that idealized love as purely joyful - She instead presents love as inherently paradoxical - simultaneously elevating and wounding - This subverts sentimental conventions and aligns with Pre-Raphaelite interest in intense, often painful emotional states
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Personification ("Thirsting Longing eyes") transforms them into vessels of emotional desperation - The physical act of thirst underscores the speaker’s deep, visceral need for reconnection with the beloved - This amplifies the intensity of mourning, suggesting that grief is not just emotional but embodied and consuming
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Personification ("Thirsting Longing eyes") and the eyes, usually passive observers, are depicted as actively desiring, emphasizing the speaker’s helplessness - They do not act but wait - watching “the slow door” - reinforcing a sense of endurance and patient suffering - This passivity reflects Victorian ideals of feminine grief, while also critiquing the inertia imposed by emotional repression
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Personification ("Thirsting Longing eyes") implies a soul-level thirst, aligning with religious imagery of spiritual longing and delayed resurrection - Just as the eyes thirst, the soul yearns for divine reunion or metaphysical transcendence - In this reading, the eyes become metaphors for the soul’s eternal gaze toward a closed Heaven
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Personification ("Thirsting Longing eyes") and Rossetti’s focus on the eyes watching the “slow door” shows them as trapped in anticipation - This powerlessness speaks to the futility of longing for the past, as the eyes can only witness time slipping away, never act upon it - The slow, deliberate pacing of the door mirrors the slow erosion of hope
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Personification ("Thirsting Longing eyes") implies a profound absence - an unmet need that consumes the speaker from within - This lack is not merely physical, but deeply emotional and spiritual, suggesting that the beloved's absence has left the speaker hollow and desiring fulfilment that reality cannot provide - The personification of the eyes as “thirsting” evokes the ache of insatiable longing, where even vision cannot quench the desire for reunion, underscoring the void left by death or separation
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Metaphor ("Slow Door") operates as a metaphor for the boundary between life and death, a transitional threshold the soul hesitates to cross - Its slowness implies both reluctance and inevitability, capturing the painful, drawn-out process of parting from the earthly realm - The speaker watches this door with longing, caught in a suspended state between memory and mourning
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Metaphor ("Slow Door") becomes a liminal space - neither fully open nor closed - symbolising the fragile threshold between the dream world and reality, between spiritual presence and physical absence - Its slowness suggests an agonising delay in transition, mirroring the speaker’s entrapment in a state of yearning - Rossetti evokes the liminality central to grief, where the mourner resides not in the past or present, but in a haunted in-between
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Metaphor ("Slow Door") and the door metaphorically guards Paradise, which the speaker believes the soul should have entered upon wakening - It signifies exclusion from divine reunion, heightening the tragedy that the beloved remains unreachable - The slow pace intensifies emotional agony, as it represents the delay of eternal peace or closure
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Metaphor ("Slow Door") may reflect the speaker’s inner struggle to accept loss - Its gradual opening - or refusal to fully open - mirrors the reluctance of the psyche to let go of love and memory - The metaphor thus becomes a psychological image of grieving, where closure is delayed by emotional resistance
• In 'Echo', the quote "Too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise... Where thirsting longing eyes, Watch the slow door", the use of Metaphor ("Slow Door") may also metaphorically reflect the slow and painful passage of time in mourning - The image suggests how grief can warp perception - time becomes heavy, every moment drawn out in waiting and watching - The door’s slowness captures the stagnation and timeless suspension of bereavement