Echo

Echo 

Christina Georgina Rossetti

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. 

Dream Land 

Where sunless rivers weep

Their waves into the deep,

She sleeps a charmed sleep:

Awake her not.

Led by a single star,

She came from very far

To seek where shadows are

Her pleasant lot.

She left the rosy morn,

She left the fields of corn,

For twilight cold and lorn

And water springs.

Through sleep, as through a veil,

She sees the sky look pale,

And hears the nightingale

That sadly sings.

Rest, rest, a perfect rest

Shed over brow and breast;

Her face is toward the west,

The purple land.

She cannot see the grain

Ripening on hill and plain;

She cannot feel the rain

Upon her hand.

Rest, rest, for evermore

Upon a mossy shore;

Rest, rest at the heart's core

Till time shall cease:

Sleep that no pain shall wake;

Night that no morn shall break

Till joy shall overtake

Her perfect peace. 

Twilight Night

I

We met, hand to hand,

We clasped hands close and fast,

As close as oak and ivy stand;

But it is past:

Come day, come night, day comes at last.

We loosed hand from hand,

We parted face from face;

Each went his way to his own land.

At his own pace,

Each went to fill his separate place. 

If we should meet one day,

If both should not forget,

We shall clasp hands the accustomed way,

As when we met

So long ago, as I remember yet.

II

Where my heart is (wherever that may be)

Might I but follow!

If you fly thither over heath and lea,

O honey-seeking bee,

O careless swallow, 

Bid some for whom I watch keep watch for me.

Alas! that we must dwell, my heart and I,

So far asunder.

Hours wax to days, and days and days creep by;

I watch with wistful eye,

I wait and wonder:

When will that day draw nigh—that hour draw nigh?

Not yesterday, and not, I think, to-day;

Perhaps to-morrow.

Day after day 'to-morrow' thus I say: 

I watched so yesterday

In hope and sorrow,

Again to-day I watch the accustomed way.