Remember
by Christina Rosetti
‘Remember’, written by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) when she was still a teenager, is a classic Victorian poem about mourning and remembrance.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
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 summary, the poet requests that the addressee of the poem remember her after she has died. (The addressee is presumably her lover since they had ‘plann’d’ a ‘future’ together.) But what gives the poem a twist is the concluding thought that it would be better for her loved one to forget her and be happy than to remember her if it makes that Rossettiperson sad. It is this second part of the poem’s ‘argument’ that saves it from spilling over into mawkish sentimentality.
In this respect, ‘Remember’ is similar to Rossetti’s earlier poem ‘Song’ (‘When I am dead, my dearest’), also written when she was in her teens: in that poem, too, Rossetti entreats someone not to sing any sad songs for her when she dies and says it does not matter whether her lover remembers or forgets her.
‘Remember’ is composed in the form known as the Petrarchan sonnet, rhymed abba abba cdd ece, traditionally associated with love poetry (indeed, Petrarch, who pioneered the form, wrote love sonnets to the woman he admired, Laura). As with all Petrarchan sonnets there is a volta (or ‘turn’) at the end of the eighth line and the beginning of the ninth, marking the point where the octave (eight-line section) ends and the sestet (six-line section) begins. This ‘turn’ is signalled by Rossetti’s use of the word ‘Yet’: the argument of the sonnet changes direction at this point.