REMEMBER
By: Christina Rossetti
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
(1830 – 1894)
Christina Rossetti is one of the most
important female poets in the 19 th century.
She was the youngest child of an
exceptionally artistic Italian family living
in London: her father was a successful
poet, her brother was a highly influential
painter, and her two other siblings were
both writers.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
The Rossetti family faced financial crisis when her father’s
physical and mental health failed. She, herself, experienced
depression and illness during this period and suffered a
nervous system breakdown at the age of 14.
Rossetti spent most of her life as a companion to her mother
and was devoted to her religion and the writing of poetry.
Most of her poetry is quite melancholic. Common themes of
her poetry include the impermanence of the world and the
desperate passion of ill-fated love.
R E A D T H E P O E M O N PA G E 1 0 2
REMEMBER
• As the title suggests, “Remember” explores how we mourn and
commemorate a loved one after they have died. In the poem, the speaker
begins to implore her beloved to remember her after she has died.
• Ultimately, the speaker appears to undermine her request to be
remembered and grants her beloved permission to forget her, if doing so
will make him happier, as that is what she wishes for him.
The poem opens with a summarizing statement of the Speaker’s intention: the unnamed ‘you’ must remember
the Speaker after she has died. She opens the poem with an imperative “Remember me when I am gone”.
She emphasises the distance that will be between them by expanding ‘gone away’ to ‘gone far away’ and says
she will enter ‘the silent land’, which is a euphemism for the afterlife. The place is ‘silent’ because it could
either be a peaceful place or it could a barren place, empty of noisy life. The Speaker could also be referring to
the fact that they would not be able to speak to each other.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
The Speaker confirms that she will be dead by saying that they will no longer be able to touch and hold each
other. This line is the first suggestion that the person being addressed by the Speaker is her lover as he is used to
holding her by the hand.
In this line, the Speaker describes how she will be unable to ‘stay’ after she has ‘half turned to go’.
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
The line captures the inevitability and finality of the Speaker’s death. Once she has begun to die or ‘turn’
away from her lover, she will be unable to turn back and ‘stay’.
It also evokes another intimate moment that lovers share: the moment a lover breaks off from holding hands
and begins to walk away, but then turns back, either for one last kiss or to say one last statement.
By describing this moment, the speaker captures the depth and intensity of their love and highlights how much
will be lost after she has died.
She asks to be remembered daily and says that this will be when they have no more time together, after she has
died.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd :
She also asks her lover to remember her at those moments when he would have told her about his plans for
their ‘future’.
The fact that the other person had planned a future for them emphasizes the strength of their bond and the
magnitude of what will be missing when she dies. This moment of them discussing their future plans
transforms the Speaker into a profound expression of what is lost when the person you love dies.
Note the sense of urgency in this line. The Speaker asks ‘only’ to be ‘remember[ed]’, which implies that she wants
nothing more than that, and hints that there will be nothing more that can be done anyway.
The caesura (break or pause in
the middle of the line) Only remember me; you understand
accentuates her request. The The Speaker confirms that there will be
semi colon after the phrase It will be late to counsel then or pray. nothing more to be done after she has died
‘remember me’ creates a pause by reminding her lover that it will be too
that emphasizes her appeal by ‘late’ then for ‘pray[ing]’ or seeking
separating the words ‘me’ and ‘counsel’.
‘you’, alluding to the distance
between the Speaker and her Such activities are only useful while she is
lover and the living and the alive.
dead.
‘Yet’ introduces the volta (change) in the poem. Take note of the change in the Speaker’s reasoning and attitude from
now to the end of the poem. The volta alerts us to the fact that the Speaker is experiencing a change of heart or a
different set of feelings and thoughts.
Yet if you should forget me for a while She acknowledges that her
lover might ‘forget’ about
And afterwards remember, do not grieve: her on occasion ‘for a
while’.
Replacing the verb ‘remember’ with
‘forget’ creates a sharp contrast that The Speaker notes that he will ‘afterwards remember’, and,
emphasizes the shift in the Speaker’s thus, will not be able to forget her entirely. Perhaps it is this
reasoning. The Speaker now accepts that realization that she will never be forgotten completely that
the ongoing demands of living will offers her some measure of consolation.
distract her lover from mourning her
every now and then. The Speaker’s
attitude appears to have softened and
She tells him not to grieve or feel upset if he does forget her
become more realistic.
from time to time.
She hopes that her illness ‘corruption’ that has afflicted her body and the ‘darkness’ that will envelop her in
death will ‘leave’ behind a trace or ‘vestige’ of her intention or wish ‘the thoughts that once I had’ – to spare
her lover some of the cruel anguish of grief.
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
In these lines, she explains her apparent
contradiction in line 10 “And afterwards
remember, do not grieve” by arguing that
she would rather her beloved ‘forget’ and
‘smile’ than ‘remember and be sad’. She
wishes to spare her lover the pain of grief if
it becomes unbearable.
The poem is an example of the use of the figure speech apostrophe.
Apostrophe is when one addresses an entity that is not present or unable to
respond, for example an inanimate object.
It allows the Speaker to express his or her internal thoughts and feelings to
someone or something that is unable to respond and, in this way, share these
with the reader.
In this poem, apostrophe is used to address a beloved who is not physically
present to the Speaker.
W H AT I S T H E T O N E O F T H E P O E M ?
The tone is solemn, somber, and melancholic
HOW DOES STRUCTURE CONVEY THE
MESSAGE?
Create an answer, as a class, to this question – Petrarchan sonnet with
Octave and Sestet
HOW DOES STYLE CONVEY THE
MESSAGE?
Create an answer, as a class, to this question
