the beloved back Only dreams can Sweet Memories of Beauty Rossetti shows the pain of lost love through tender memories She remembers the beloved s beauty She says Soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight These images show how beautiful and gentle the beloved once was But these memories also hurt her because they cannot return in real life Lost love becomes sweet but painful It is a soft echo from the past Dreams as the Only Reunion The speaker says dreams are Too sweet too bitter sweet Dreams bring the beloved back but waking up takes the beloved away again If the dream were real she says it would be like waking in Paradise This shows that lost love feels like a heaven she cannot reach Paradise becomes a symbol of the perfect love she once had but can never have again Death as the Final Door The slow door is a picture of death The poet says Slow door letting in lets out no more It opens only once It takes someone in It never lets that person come back The beloved has passed through this door She cannot return to the speaker This makes their separation final There is no way to cross this door again Death stands between them like a locked gate It blocks all paths The speaker cannot reach the beloved now Lost love becomes fixed It becomes deep It cannot change It cannot heal It stays forever in the speaker s heart Dreams Give Her Life Again In the last stanza the speaker says Yet come to me in dreams that I may live This line shows how strongly she depends on memory and dreams In real life she feels cold and lifeless It means her life has become empty without the beloved Only dreams make her feel alive again She wants the beloved to speak softly and turn close to her just like before This shows the longing to return to old moments of closeness The Pain of Time Passing The poem ends with the heartbreaking line As long ago my love how long ago This line shows how many years have passed since she lost her beloved Time has moved on but her love has not faded Lost love becomes an echo that never stops repeating inside her heart Through soft images gentle language and symbols of night dreams and death Christina Rossetti beautifully shows the theme of lost love The beloved is gone forever but the memory returns again and again like an echo The poem proves that lost love continues to live inside the heart even when the person is no longer in the world nbsp