Echo

Christina Rossetti

Teacher card

Published: 1866, in Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems
Length: 18 lines, 128 words, 1 word in 32 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: love
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

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 brightAs sunlight on a stream;Come back in tears,O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh 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 eyesWatch the slow doorThat opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may liveMy very life again though cold in death:Come back to me in dreams, that I may givePulse for pulse, breath for breath:Speak low, lean low,As long ago, my love, how long ago!

Christina Rossetti (died 1894), Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems (1866), lines 1733–1752 of Project Gutenberg ebook #16950. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for names in posy cardsin posy · 18 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
posy.popplepoetry.com/sources#ro-echo

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/rossetti-echo · popplepoetry.com