'Echo' Worksheet Answers

1. Summarise the poem's content briefly
The poem follows an unspecified voice who longs for a long lost/dead loved one. It goes on to explore the speaker's thoughts and experiences of 'paradise', or a form of afterlife.

2. What tone is used by he speaker at the start with the imperative verb in 'come to me'?
This opening imperative, when taken out of context, could be interpreted as harsh or commanding, but when taken in context, it seems more of a plea, or an outcry of longing or loneliness. The repetition of the phrase further indicates that it is more of a plea than any sort of actual, tangible command.

3. Why do they feel this way?
The speaker may have been given course to feel this way due to the implied loss or death of a loved one. Another interpretation of the speaker's anguish is a more religious interpretation, where-upon the speaker has lost faith or 'touch' with God, or their own belief in God.

4. In stanza 2 the speaker imagines paradise. What is it like? How does (s)he use poetic techniques to describe paradise? Explain the impression given by the language.
The speaker describes paradise as being the home of 'souls brimfull of love'. Despite the seemingly positive nature of this image, it soon turns out to be rather the opposite. The speaker continues, saying: 'Where thirsting longing eyes watch he slow door that opening, letting in, lets out no more'. This, when compared to the previous image, is a much darker and bleak image. This passage gives an impression that, despite being 'paradise', the afterlife leaves the souls of the dead unsatisfied, or even bored. It suggests that due to the fact that they can never again leave this 'paradise' they begin to foster an extreme longing for what, or who, they had left behind in the world of the living.
The use of repetition in the first line of the stanza 'sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet' shows that while paradise may, at first, seem like a good, or 'sweet', thing it soon becomes 'too sweet' and then 'too bitter sweet' after being there for too long. This gives the impression that paradise may not be all it is said to be.

5.In the final stanza there is a change in tone with the connective 'yet', how will the speaker's problem be solved?
The connective 'yet' serves as a turning point for the speaker. It is at this point that the speaker abandons the bleak tone that was adopted for the first two stanzas and seems to adopt a more introspective, hopeful tone. The speaker's problem looks to be solved by way of a form of psuedo-resurrection of the speaker's lost loved one. The speaker says: 'come to me in dreams, that I may live my very life again tho' cold in death'. This shows that the speaker would be satisfied with simply seeing their lost one in a dream, to a point where it would make them feel 'alive' again. This vivid mental image is succeeded by a more physical, but still dream-like image, in 'that I may give pulse for pulse, breath for breath; speak low, lean low.'