Remember

Although contemporary readers of “Remember” not as versed in the poetry of the Renaissance might not readily recognize the poem’s form, Rosetti’s readers in the Victorian Era would certainly have recognized the form of her lyric as a sonnet—more to the point, given its structural make-up, a Petrarchan sonnet. Acquainted with the convention of the sonnet that dates back to 14th-century Italy, readers in Rosetti’s era would expect, as with most Petrarchan sonnets, a love song. The opening line indeed, with its wistful tone that speaks of fast-approaching separation, appears to conjure a familiar love scene: two lovers moving inexorably toward a painful goodbye. The sonnet opens conventionally. “Remember me when I am gone away” (Line 1). The first-person voice gives the approaching goodbye its wrenching depth and its emotional immediacy.

In the second line, however, the sonnet twists suddenly from an anatomy of long-distance love to an investigation into the psychology of dying, a real letting go, lovers adjusting to the idea of death itself as the speaker reveals she is departing, yes, but for “the silent land” (Line 2).