Remember

One of the most familiar (and beloved) poems by one of the most respected and commercially successful British poets of the Victorian Era, Christina Rossetti’s sonnet “Remember” explores a thorny dilemma: how does a person in love die, or more particularly, how does a person die knowing the one they love will survive them? In the poem, a young lover faces imminent death and attempts to counsel the lover she will leave behind how best to adjust. In examining the dynamics of mourning and the problematic strategies for handling such enormous loss, the poem tests the relationship between the selfishness of a dying lover who, of course, wants to be remembered against that same lover’s selfless wish for the surviving lover to find their way to new happiness and new purpose. Published in 1862 in Rossetti’s groundbreaking first collection Goblin Market and Other Poems, which established her reputation as one of the foremost young voices of Britain’s post-Romantic era, the sonnet itself dates to 1849 when Rossetti herself was just a teenager. Tapping into the Victorian era’s fascination with death and with the protocols of mourning, the poem skirts morbid sentimentality by lyrically describing how a person, now loving and emotionally vibrant, prepares for the inevitable transposition into becoming a memory.

Poet Biography

Born in London in 1830 into privilege (her father, born in Italy, was an internationally recognized poet and Dante scholar), Christina Rossetti enjoyed a happy childhood, gifted with the opportunity few girls of her era enjoyed: an education. She was schooled in prestigious academies and, because of her father, had access to one of the finest private libraries in London. It is said that young Rossetti, before she could write, was dictating original poetry to her mother. Early on, Rossetti explored the wisdom literatures of Antiquity, exploring philosophical questions about the nature and purpose of the cosmos. By the age of 20, Rossetti began what would be a lifelong struggle against a series of increasingly debilitating illnesses, her writing and reading a constant solace given her growing perception of the vulnerability of life itself. During this difficult time, Rossetti studied her conservative Anglican religion and her growing certainty in an era in which atheism was becoming chic about the necessary viability of the Christian God.

Given her family’s prominence and her own reputation for intellectual vibrancy, Rossetti was offered numerous opportunities to marry but declined, often citing her uneasiness over the religious commitment (or lack of it) in her suitors. She wrote constantly, and with the appearance of her first collection of verse in 1862, she found herself among the most respected young poets of Victorian society. Save for a time in the mid-1850s after her father’s lengthy illness and retirement sapped the family’s finances when Rossetti (along with her mother) worked as teachers, Rossetti dedicated herself to writing, producing volumes of lyric poetry, collections of controversial essays about a wide-range of hot button issues, among them slavery, child labor, and women’s rights, as well as forays into fiction and children’s stories. Sales of her work were steady, and critical plaudits plentiful. Indeed, at the death of Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson in 1892, word circulated through Victoria’s court that the queen favored Rossetti for the honor.  Rossetti, for her part, seldom circulated in London society, indeed seldom left her home. She had poor health and an increasingly melancholic disposition as one by one close friends and members of her family died, leaving her feeling isolated with only her writing as solace. Rossetti dealt in her last two years with cancer, including two massive and unsuccessful surgeries that left her barely able to walk. At her death in 1894 at age 64, she was interred in the family tomb in Highgate Cemetery in Middlesex about 10 miles south of London.

Poem Text

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.

Rossetti, Christina. “Remember.” 1849. The Poetry Foundation

Summary

Although the poem does not provide any wider context than the speaker’s direct address to a lover, the opening eight lines establish an alarming premise. The speaker, presumably a woman, is contemplating her fast-approaching death, from what, however, is not indicated. No age is given, no names are shared, no circumstances of the death, indeed no gender is even specified (only “you”)—just the urgency to share with a lover the quiet panic of imminent mortality. “Remember me when I am gone away” (Line 1)—the opening line seems initially innocuous enough, the speaker sounds as if she is nothing grander than a lover leaving for some distant place. The poem begins, then, as a kind of lyric account of two lovers’ separation, a cliché premise of sonnets: one lover must go, the other must await their return.

The second line, however, moves the poem away from such tender sadness to a far more profound tragedy. The speaker is off not to some exotic port but rather to “the silent land” (Line 2), a euphemism for death itself. Remember me, the now-apparently dying lover says, “when you can no more hold me by the hand” (Line 3). The separation takes on a much more sobering tone. This is no tearful lovers’ goodbye—this is two lovers contemplating the death of one of them.

The opening eight lines, then, create a sense of the lovers’ closeness even as the speaker is beginning to understand the absoluteness of her approaching death. Lines 4-7 capture the dynamic of the two lovers. Theirs is a love in which both partners talk and share ideas, a rich and satisfying communion that makes the speaker always delay, hesitate anytime they must say goodbye. At such moments, she cannot bring herself to let go of her lover’s hand, always pausing just a moment to look back and relish the “half turn” (Line 4). The two are, it is hinted, young, as they have enthusiastically planned a future together; perhaps they are engaged. The speaker, as a Victorian-era woman, abdicates any expectation to shape the course of their future, content without irony or discomfort to abide by the “future that you plann’d” (Line 6). Without rancor, without bitterness, the speaker reminds her lover that fast approaching are days when they can no longer hold conversations, the speaker will no longer be there to “counsel […] or pray” (Line 8) with him. In these opening eight lines, the speaker conjures a bleak world without her presence and implores her lover to never forget her, to remember her and the tender moments they shared: the intimacy of their conversations, their lingering looks, the sweet press of holding hands. “Only remember me” (Line 7), she pleads now for the third time, the repetition underscoring the speaker’s growing anxiety whether she will be remembered at all by her lover.

The poem pivots on the word “Yet” that begins Line 9. As if the speaker calms herself and reconsiders the emotional excess of her demand, the closing lines alter the urgent tone. If you forget me “afterwards” (Line 10), meaning after her death, the speaker says, that is alright, even understandable. She will be content if she is an occasional memory, if the “darkness and corruption leave / A vestige of the thought that once I had” (Lines 11-12). I will be your memory. It is a dramatic change of heart. In these lines, the speaker acknowledges her approaching surrender to physical corruption, that is the natural, if brutal and unyielding, processes of decomposition. In the final couplet, the speaker, however, offers her reconsidered plea to her lover: it is better, ultimately, that you are happy and that you live the fullest and richest life you can. “Better by far you should forget [me] and smile / Than that you should remember [me] and be sad” (Lines 13-14). Herself facing death and acknowledging the harrowing and inglorious business of decay, the speaker magnanimously absolves her lover from the tedious responsibility of attending to grieving endlessly for her at the expense of living the life he still has the chance to embrace. She will be content to be some small part of his awareness, a sweet (if rueful) memory. Keep me in your heart for a while, she offers, that will be enough.