Echo

by CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894)

A reading featuring voice artist Tracey Kummrow

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low
As long ago, my love, how long ago.

Youngest child of an Italian father, Gabriele, and Italian/English mother, Frances (Polidori). Christina was born on December 5, 1830 in London, England, where she would spend most of her life. continued

Christina Rossetti Contemporaries
Emily Dickinson
William Allingham
Lewis Carroll
Ethel Lynn Beers