Remember

“Song [When I am dead, my dearest]” by Christina Rossetti (1849; pub. 1862)

Written at the same time as “Remember,” the poem reflects the depth of Rossetti’s fascination with the death and with the dynamics of memory. Despite her relatively young age, Rossetti here imagines herself dying and looking back at life. Here, the speaker cautions whomever she is addressing (the relationship here is not clarified) not to bother with grieving at all, to allow her to edge off into the enclosing nullity of being forgotten. The poem closes with the admission that for her part, when in the grave, she will herself most likely be beyond remembering, beyond the agony of loneliness and the ache of separation.

“I Heard a Fly Buzz— When I Died—” (Poem 591) by Emily Dickinson (1844)

Much like Rossetti, whose poetry she read and admired, Dickinson frames a short lyric that records her own moment of dying. The grand moment, however, is ruined by an annoying fly that keeps buzzing about her face at the moment she dies. Much as Rossetti moves toward the acknowledgment of her own decomposition, the irony of the anticipation of the opening of heaven’s portal ruined by a trivial fly reminds Dickinson that for all the glory of her Christian soul she will be, at her death, a most un-glorious body, really dead meat and thus very attractive to the blue buzzing of flies.