Echo

Language analysis -

• Simile - contrast between the stream and the sunlight - dark and light - glittering effect of the water = possibly supernatural in reference todeath and afterlife
• Title is ambiguous (one word) creates mystery
• The title relates to the form and the content (echoes in the structure of the poem) and it echoes the past - memories
• "finished years" - nostalgic - recognition that happiness is gone
• "tears" - ambiguous - could mean happiness, sadness, anger etc.
• "O/Oh" - apostrophe - strong emotion
• "Paradise" - conflict between love and religion
• Ambiguous about who is dead - narrator? character? no one?
• Waiting for lover to die (possible narrative)
• Water imagery - romantic poetry
• Song-like tone
• Adapting traditional form
• Longer lines - pentameter - trochaic and iambic
• Rhyming couplet reinforces likeliness to romantic poetry

Comparison to other poems -

Song (When I Am Dead, My Dearest)-

• Both lyrical
• Both have a theme of death
• Talk about afterlife
• However, the narrator doesn't want to be remembered

Shut Out -

• Distance between the two people in the poem

Remember -

• Lyrical
• Want to remember the past