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Remember
In the end, the poem suggests that what truly matters to her is
POEM TEXT that she shape her beloved, becoming a part of him through her
influence on his life—and in doing so, become a subtle presence
1 Remember me when I am gone away, rather than a constantly remembered absence.
2 Gone far away into the silent land; The first lines cast the speaker’s death in terms of what she and
3 When you can no more hold me by the hand, her beloved won’t be able to do any more when she’s dead and
the only way they can come in contact is through memory. The
4 Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
speaker first imagines her death as a journey to a “silent land,” a
5 Remember me when no more day by day
place that takes both her body and her voice away from her
6 You tell me of our future that you plann'd: love. Here there is no way for them to communicate, to make
7 Only remember me; you understand plans, to help each other, or simply to be with each other.
8 It will be late to counsel then or pray. Memory will be all that’s left to the beloved, then, and the
9 Yet if you should forget me for a while speaker insists that he should cling to it.
10 And afterwards remember, do not grieve: Yet, soon enough, the speaker later tempers her insistence. If
11 For if the darkness and corruption leave her lover forgets to do this remembering for a while, he
12 A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, shouldn’t feel guilty—so long as she remains present to him in
13 Better by far you should forget and smile other ways. What really matters to the speaker is that, in her
14 Than that you should remember and be sad. absence, she should remain to her beloved as “a vestige of the
thoughts that once I had”—an influencing presence, maybe not
recognized, but still alive in the beloved’s mind. As long as she
lives on in this way, it’s better for her lover to be happy with her
SUMMARY forgotten presence than sad about her remembered absence.
That said, the speaker isn't quite all the way to hoping that her
Remember me when I'm no longer around, having gone far beloved can forget her and be happy without her forever! She
away into death's silent land; when you can't hold my hand imagines him forgetting her only for “a while.” Either through
anymore, and when I can no longer make as if I'm leaving, and her influence or her memory, she means to be a permanent part
then turn back and stay after all. Remember me when you can of her beloved’s life; what matters is that their connection can
no longer tell me about all your future plans for us. Just outlast death.
remember me; you understand that it'll be too late then to give
me advice or to pray for me. But if you do forget me for a while,
Where this theme appears in the poem:
and then remember me again later, don't feel bad. Because as
long as darkness and rot don't destroy the traces of my • Lines 1-14
thoughts in you, it'll much better for you to forget about me and
be happy than to remember me and be sad.
LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS
THEMES LINES 1-2
Remember me when I am gone away,
LOVE, MEMORY, AND GRIEF Gone far away into the silent land;
In “Remember,” a speaker entreats a loved one to "Remember" begins with simple immediacy, as the speaker
remember her after her death. At the same time, addresses her listener with one straightforward demand:
however, the speaker insists that her beloved shouldn’t feel bad remember me when I'm dead. But the way she imagines her
about it if he forgets her for a little while: so long as she’s had death tells readers a lot about why it's so important to her that
some permanent influence on him, it’s ultimately better for him she be remembered.
to forget about her and be happy than to remember her and be
Death, to this speaker, is a country. She imagines it as "the silent
sad. The poem thus explores the poignant push-pull of grief:
land," "far away": not just remote, but speechless. No messages
while the speaker wishes to remain forever with her love in
can travel to or from this soundless place. Where some might
some way, she also doesn’t want her absence to cause him pain.
imagine death as a place from which they can watch over their

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living loved ones, this speaker frames it as a place of complete perspective a little. In the first lines, she's emphasized the ways
disconnection. in which she won't be able to communicate with her beloved
The anadiplosis of these first lines emphasizes the distance and after her death; now, she thinks more about how her beloved
disconnect of death: the speaker won't just be gone, she'll be won't be able to communicate with her.
"gone
gone aawa
wayy, / Gone far awa
wayy." Even the way she uses the word Time is important in these lines. The speaker emphasizes the
"gone" underlines her point. She imagines gone-ness as a state way that time looks to the living in the diacope of "dadayy by da
dayy."
of being: she doesn't say "remember me after I go away," but She herself won't be participating in the forward march of days
"when I am gone away," as if her very self will become a vacancy when she's gone. Similarly, her alliteration on flat /oo/ sounds
after her death. draws together the words "you ou" and "fuuture." Her beloved
These lines make clear that the poem is an apostrophe
apostrophe, a direct won't be able to tell her of that intended future, because only
address to someone. While the reader doesn't know who this he will be present there: "you" has a future, the speaker does
person might be, these first lines create the strong sense that not, and his efforts to tell her of "our" future will be fruitless.
it's someone the speaker feels very closely connected to—so These are particularly poignant lines. They suggest a young
closely connected, in fact, that the thought that he might forget couple getting ready for a whole life together—a life that the
her when death separates them necessitates a whole poem! speaker suggests is in no way guaranteed.
The reader may also begin to get some hints about the But what's really important to her is that, even if these plans
addressee's identity when they notice that this poem is a are thwarted, her beloved still remember her. She begins this
Petrarchan sonnet
sonnet—a form strongly associated with love quatrain exactly the same way as she began the last one:
poetry. (See the "Form" section for more on this.) "Remember me." Those words will recur and recur throughout
the poem, echoing the words of the Ghost in Hamlet
Hamlet—a spectral
LINES 3-4 speaker reaching out from beyond the grave. A big part of
When you can no more hold me by the hand, remembering, it seems, is remembering to remember.
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
LINES 7-8
The speaker elaborates on the world after her death, this time
through images from the world of the living. In these lines, the Only remember me; you understand
speaker imagines what she and her beloved can do now. While It will be late to counsel then or pray.
the first lines have introduced death as "the silent Here, the speaker insists even more emphatically that being
land"—suggesting, by contrast, that the world of the living is a remembered is all she desires. Her language is deceptively
world of speech and sound—the speaker in these lines simple: "Only remember me."
emphasizes physical touch and presence. These few words could mean a number of different things:
Her language mirrors her thoughts. The alliter
alliterativ
ativee /h/ sounds
in "h
hold me by the hand" link the words just like the hands they • Remember me and me alone.
describe. And the repetition of "Nor I half turn to go yet turning • Just remember me, that's all.
stay" itself turns and returns, just as the speaker imagines • Remember me in spite of everything.
starting to leave and then turning right back to stay with her
beloved a little while longer. The speaker evokes contact and These complex layers of meaning, all dependent on that one
presence only to undo it: these warmly-imagined moments are word "only," tell the reader something important about the
precisely the things she and her beloved won't be able to do speaker: her words are literally deep, working on many levels at
when she's gone to the "silent land." once.
The poem's rh
rhyme
yme scheme similarly plays off its meaning. Like This effect is only strengthened by the words with which she
every Petrarchan sonnet
sonnet, this poem uses an ABBA pattern in its closes this quatr
quatrain
ain: "you understand / It will be late to counsel
first two quatr
quatrains
ains—a pattern of going away and then coming then or pray." These are pretty strong words, suggesting that
back again. There's something poignant in that movement here. no form of communication, not even prayer, will reach her once
The speaker's whole point is that, after her death, she'll no she's dead. Memory, and only memory, will be the one point of
longer be able to return. But memory can bring her back to her connection left to her. The subtle assonance between "laate" and
beloved, just as the rhymes reflect and return. "praay" adds musicality to the line as it speeds forward.

LINES 5-6 Taken together, these first two quatrains—each using that
mirroring, repeating, returning ABBA rhrhyme
yme scheme
scheme—present
Remember me when no more day by day a not-altogether-straightforward message. The speaker wants
You tell me of our future that you plann'd: her beloved to remember her, that's clear enough. But there's a
Moving into the second quatr
quatrain
ain, the speaker shifts her lot of hidden complexity here. If death separates her so

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emphatically from her beloved, why does it matter to her to some kind of influence on him, even if he doesn't consciously
know that he'll remember her? Whose purposes does this know it. If her thoughts have shaped his, she'll live in him
remembering serve? There's the implication here that, even if forever.
the speaker is "gone far away into the silent land," she'll still On the surface level, the way the speaker communicates this
have enough consciousness to care what's on her beloved's subtle and loving idea seems simple. The last words of the two
mind. last lines are childlike in their plainness: it's better for her lover
LINES 9-10 to "smile" than to "be sad." The parparallelism
allelism in lines 13 and 14
underlines that simplicity, linking forgetting to smiling and
Yet if you should forget me for a while remembering to sadness with a plain, sing-songy logic.
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
But the shape of these final few lines enriches them with all
In these lines, this sonnet comes to its volta—that is, the sorts of deeper meaning. First off, consider the enjambment
moment when the poem's train of thought changes course, and between lines 11 and 12:
the speaker introduces a new idea. Here, that change is a bold
one. The speaker has just spent the first octet (that is, the first
For if the darkness and corruption lea
leavve
eight lines) telling her beloved to remember her at all costs,
A vvestige
estige of the thoughts that once I had,
that this will be the only thing left to them when she's dead.
Now she turns back on her idea, just like she imagined
Because of the way the line breaks right in the middle of a
physically turning back to her beloved: "Y Yet if you should forget
sentence here, a potential double meaning forms. Before the
me for a while [...]"
reader moves from line 11 to line 12, there's a split second in
This is a pretty big change! But perhaps not as big as it seems at which line 11 might mean something very different: "If the
first: darkness and corruption themselves go away," rather than "If the
darkness and corruption leave behind a trace of my thoughts." In
Yet if you should forget me for a while spite of the speaker's earlier talk about the "silent land," there's
And afterwards remember
remember, do not grieve: a hint here of an even happier possibility: that the silent land
might not be silent forever, and that the seeming eternities of
Sure, her beloved shouldn't feel bad if he forgets her for a while, darkness and corruption might eventually end. And the
just so long as he remembers again afterwards. Regardless, it's "thought" the speaker imagines leaving behind is never subject
not a small change to go from insisting on memory and only to "corruption": thought can't rot.
memory at all costs to admitting that, life being what it is, her
That incorruptibility of thought is also one of the poem's big
beloved probably will forget her for a while, from time to time.
unspoken ideas. For, after all, what is this poem but a message
The speaker here tempers her intensity with a humane realism. from "the silent land"? The reader might well reflect that this
She doesn't wish her beloved to feel guilty or mournful, even if poem's author is indeed dead now—but here are her words, still
he can't always do the one thing she wants him to do when speaking. A "vestige of the thoughts that once I had" does
she's gone. survive—and not just for her unnamed beloved, but for all who
The changed thought goes along with a changed rh rhyme
yme read her sonnet
sonnet. Not just the love and thought captured in
scheme
scheme. Where the first two stanzas, with their emphasis on poetry, but poetry itself, can face down death.
return (or the lack thereof) and remembering, used a regular
ABBA rhyme scheme, here something more complicated
begins. The rhymes in the final sestet (that is, the last six lines) POETIC DEVICES
will run like this: CDD ECE. This irregular but ultimately
harmonious pattern fits right in with the speaker's gentler, ALLITERATION
more flexible, more complicated frame of mind. Alliter
Alliteration
ation is one of the most common poetic devices. Those
repeating initial sounds don't turn up that often in day-to-day
LINES 11-14
speech, and therefore often makes a poem feel, well, poetic:
For if the darkness and corruption leave heightened and artful. But in "Remember," this effect is fairly
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, low-key, gently emphasizing linked ideas.
Better by far you should forget and smile
For instance, take a look at the alliteration on /h/ sounds in lines
Than that you should remember and be sad.
3-4:
Concluding, the speaker explains why her beloved shouldn't
grieve if he forgets her for a moment. If there's still some trace When you can no more hold me by the hand,
of her in his mind, she says, it's better that he should forget her Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
and be happy than remember her and be sad; she'll always have

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That /h/ is a gentle sound, and it subtly draws together images self any particular good.
of touch and connection: holding hands, half-leaving but then And, poignantly, the /oo/ sounds in "Youou tell me of our fu
uture"
turning back to embrace one's beloved again. The soft, draw together the beloved and the future—a future that the
repeated sounds suggest the tender affection between the speaker will no longer participate in if she's dead and her
speaker and her beloved. beloved is alive. The assonance here thus subtly reflects a
There's similarly subtle alliteration on /f/ sounds in lines 9 and bigger part of the poem's meaning.
13:
Where Assonance appears in the poem:
Yet if you should forget me for a while
[...] • Line 1: “Remember,” “when”
• Line 3: “no,” “hold”
Better by far you should forget and smile
• Line 6: “You,” “future,” “you”
• Line 8: “late,” “pray”
This is an even quieter effect than before: the /f/ sounds of the
• Line 13: “Better,” “forget”
words "for" and "far" are especially discreet, since those words
are pretty unobtrusive ones. But the connection between those
words makes a difference in meaning: connecting "forget" and APOSTROPHE
"for a while" makes it clear that the speaker isn't imagining Apostrophe often plays an important role in
being forgotten forever, and connecting "far" and "forget" sonnets
sonnets—especially love sonnets, in which the whole point is to
emphasizes the speaker's insistence that, really, her beloved's address a lover. Here, the whole poem is directed at the
happiness is more important than his constant attention to her speaker's beloved, advising him and consoling him.
memory. The tone of the apostrophe here is at first a kind of warning,
even a command. Like Hamlet's ghost, the speaker repeatedly
Where Alliter
Alliteration
ation appears in the poem: tells her beloved, "Remember me!" (See the Poetic Devices
entry on repetition for more on this.) But this poem's
• Line 3: “hold,” “hand”
commands aren't so dreadful as that ghost's. Rather, the
• Line 4: “half”
• Line 5: “me,” “more” speaker's list of things she and her beloved will no longer be
• Line 9: “Yet,” “you,” “forget,” “for” able to do—speak, touch, make plans—is itself a poignant
• Line 13: “Better by,” “far,” “forget,” “smile” reminder, a catalogue of things that he might want to recall
• Line 14: “sad” when she's gone.
The speaker's tone takes a turn in the second half of the poem,
ASSONANCE where she relents a little, understanding that her beloved is
pretty likely to forget her for a while at some point. But she
Assonance
Assonance, like its cousin alliter
alliteration
ation, often appears precisely
sweeps up this forgetting in her posthumous instructions, too,
because it helps to make a poem sound like a poem: the
kindly telling her beloved, "do not grieve": it's human to forget,
heightened, artful, musical sound assonance provides sets
and she wants him to be happy.
poetic speech apart from everyday speech.
The apostrophe in this poem thus evokes the tenderness of a
The assonance in this poem is pretty muted and doesn't draw a
loving relationship. The speaker's deep affection for her
huge amount of attention to itself, as befits a poem that uses
beloved extends even to forgiveness for forgetting; she knows
simple language to communicate a simple request. But it does
she'll live on inside this person she's writing to, in one way or
help to draw some meaningful words together. For instance,
another.
take a look at line 13:

Beetter by far you should forgeet and smile Where Apostrophe appears in the poem:
• Line 1: “Remember me”
Here, assonance on the short /eh/ sounds of "beetter" and • Line 3: “you”
"forgeet" helps to emphasize that, yes, the speaker really is • Line 6: “You”
saying it's better for her beloved should forget her if he's • Line 9: “you”
suffering too much grief. The matching long /ay/ sounds of • Line 13: “you”
"laate" and "praay" in line 8 do similar work, strengthening the • Line 14: “you”
association between two meaningful words: while praying
might be one of the first solaces to come to her beloved's mind, CAESURA
the speaker makes it clear that such prayers won't do her dead
Caesur
Caesuras
as only turn up twice in this short poem. In both

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instances, they do something similar, lending extra emphasis to these steps in the speaker's train of thought.
the moments before and after the pause. But there's also a less emphatic stop in the middle of each of
Take a look at line 7, for starters: these sections. A semicolon or a colon always breaks each of
these thought processes into two parts, one that introduces a
Only remember me; yyou ou understand theme and one that elaborates on it.
It will be late to counsel then or pray. End-stopped lines thus trace the shape of the speaker's
developing ideas. First she sees the problem of death from her
Here, the punctuation in the middle of the line sets off the own perspective, then from the perspective of her
words "Only remember me," creating a little pocket of space beloved—and having seen it from the perspective of her
around them. The speaker has already been repeating and beloved, she can open herself up to a new kind of ending, in
repeating the words "remember me," so the emphasis here is which—maybe—she doesn't need to be remembered all the
doubly pronounced. But here the words aren't just "remember time.
me," but "Only remember me"—a phrasing that, in Rossetti's
time, could mean either "Just remember me" or "whatever you
Where End-Stopped Line appears in the poem:
do, remember me."
If the speaker means "just remember me," there's a poignant • Line 1: “away,”
second meaning concealed there: the beloved won't be able to • Line 2: “land;”
do anything but remember her, as all other possibilities are cut • Line 3: “hand,”
• Line 4: “stay.”
off. The caesura gives this extra possible meanings a little more
• Line 6: “plann'd:”
time to hit home.
• Line 8: “pray.”
The second caesura similarly sets off an important idea: • Line 10: “grieve:”
• Line 12: “had,”
Yet if you should forget me for a while • Line 14: “sad.”
And afterward remember
remember,, do not grie
grievve:
ENJAMBMENT
Here, the pause at the comma introduces the surprise of a new
Enjambment often gives poems a feeling of onward-flowing
idea. The speaker has been insisting her beloved should
forward motion. It can also play subtle tricks with each line's
remember her all through the first eight lines of the poem—but
meaning. In "Remember," it serves both these purposes.
now changes her mind, at least a little, telling him he shouldn't
feel bad if he doesn't do the thing she's been insisting he should For instance, take a look at the enjambment between lines 11
do this whole time. The caesura introduces the new emotional and 12:
dimension: the note of forgiveness and blessing upon which the
poem will end. For if the darkness and corruption lea
leavve
A vvestige
estige of the thoughts that once I had,
Where Caesur
Caesuraa appears in the poem:
Now, notice what happens if one were to cut out line 12 and
• Line 7: “me; you” look at line 11 on its own:
• Line 10: “remember, do”
For if the darkness and corruption lea
leavve
END-STOPPED LINE
The end-stopped lines in "Remember" often connect to the The word "leave" in line 11 could, all by its lonesome, mean "if
poem's interest in what ends and what stops: life and memory. the darkness and corruption go away." Of course, the reader
Consider, first, the strongest end-stops here: the lines that end reads on fast enough to get the sense the speaker means—that
with a period. There's one of these at the end of each of the first is, "if the darkness and corruption lea
leavve a remnant of my
two quatr
quatrains
ains, and one at the very end of the poem. Thus, the thoughts behind." But for just that one little moment, there's a
end-stops closely follow the poem's pattern of argument and hint at a bigger, happier possibility: maybe this deathly
thought. Each of these final periods comes after one full unit of separation won't be eternal.
thought: the first quatrain deals with what happens when the Another notable enjambment comes at the very end:
speaker can no longer communicate with her lover, the second
with what happens when he can't reach out to her, and the third Better by far you should forget and smile
with when, after all, she decides she'll remain with him even if Than that you should remember and be sad.
he forgets her. The periods mark the subtle divisions between

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Here, the sentence crossing over from one line to another gives yourself what you're planning to pick up at the store.
each of these opposite ideas—forgetting and being happy, The easiest kind of repetition to spot here is diacope
diacope, the
remembering and being sad—their own space. This brings straightforward repetition of words at short intervals. For
home the poem's most humane message: so long as the speaker example, the diacope of "da
dayy by da
dayy" in line 5 emphasizes the
remains in her beloved somehow, she's willing to relinquish passage of time.
even that remembering she wants most for the sake of his
The speaker also won't let go of the word "remember": it's not
happiness.
just that she's asking her beloved to remember her, she's asking
him to remember to remember! As her reflections in lines 9-14
Where Enjambment appears in the poem:
suggest, she knows that forgetting is natural, a thing that
• Lines 5-6: “day / You” humans are just going to do; remembering to remember is part
• Lines 7-8: “understand / It” of remembering what you're remembering.
• Lines 9-10: “while / And” Some diacope on the word "remember" is also anaphora. Both
• Lines 11-12: “leave / A” of the first two quatr
quatrains
ains begin with the same phrase:
• Lines 13-14: “smile / Than” "Remember me." This is a phrase with a past: it's famous from
Shakespeare's Hamlet
Hamlet, in which the ghost of Hamlet's father
PARADOX says those same words to his son. This subtle allusion gives the
In the second half of this sonnet
sonnet, the speaker introduces a poem a ghostly flavor itself, as if the speaker has already "gone
surprising new idea. Having maintained for the last eight lines far away into the silent land"—and underlines the poem's power
that all she wants is for her beloved to remember her when to preserve voice and speech, even after the speaker is dead.
she's dead, she suddenly counters herself: "Yet if you should (The modern-day reader might reflect that Rossetti is speaking
forget me for a while / And afterwards remember, do not from beyond the grave now!)
grieve." There's another bit of meaningful repetition in lines 1-2, when
This might seem at first to undo all the work of the first half of the speaker says:
the poem, but there's a par
parado
adoxx here. In saying that she's fine
with the speaker forgetting her as long as some "vestige of the Remember me when I am gone aawa wayy,
thoughts that once I had" remains with him, the speaker asserts Gone far aawa
wayy into the silent land;
her own permanence even as she imagines being forgotten.
The influence she's had on her beloved will live as long as he And yet another in line 4:
does, whether or not he knows it.
This points to a larger action of paradox in the poem. The Nor I half turn to go yet turning sta
stayy.
speaker imagines death as "the silent land," a place beyond all
communication. But the modern-day reader might reflect that, These moments do curiously opposite jobs. In lines 1-2, the
in reading this poem, they are hearing the voice and the anadiplosis emphasizes the speaker's isolation from her
thoughts of a writer who is now long-dead. Through poetry, the beloved in death. In line 4, the repetition evokes a moment of
"silent land" becomes not so silent after all. The poem's quiet human warmth, when, halfway out the door, the living speaker
paradox thus supports its bigger ideas of the persistence of literally "re-turns" to her beloved.
memory. The poem's final two lines also feature par
parallelism
allelism and
antithesis
antithesis, as the speaker presents two opposite scenarios
Where P
Par
arado
adoxx appears in the poem: using the same grammatical structure:

• Lines 9-12: “Yet if you should forget me for a while /

Better by far you should forget and smile
And afterwards remember, do not grieve: / For if
Than that you should remember and be sadsad.
the darkness and corruption leave / A vestige of the
thoughts that once I had,”
The repetitive structure here underscores the differences
between these situations and helps readers understand the
REPETITION speaker's logic. If forgetting is linked to happiness, then its
Repetition has a deep thematic importance in this poem, and opposite—remembrance—is naturally linked to sadness.
the different shapes it takes—mostly anaphor
anaphoraa and
diacope
diacope—work in different ways to suggest memory. In a Where Repetition appears in the poem:
sonnet about memory, it makes sense that the speaker would
repeat herself over and over, the way you might remind • Line 1: “Remember,” “ me”

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question to which the sestet then responds. Here, in the octave
• Lines 1-2: “gone away, / Gone far away” the speaker implores her beloved to remember her, while the
• Line 4: “turn to go yet turning stay” sestet then deals with the opposite scenario: the speaker tells
• Line 5: “Remember,” “ me,” “day by day” her lover what to do should he forget her.
• Line 7: “remember me” The moment when the speaker has a change of mind or heart,
• Line 10: “remember” or introduces a new idea, is called the volta, and in Petrarchan
• Line 13: “you should forget and smile”
sonnets this usually appears in the first line of the sestet. In this
• Line 14: “you should remember and be sad”
poem, the volta thus turns up exactly where readers would
expect it, with the telling word "Yet" in line 9. Finally, sonnets
METAPHOR are most commonly associated with love poetry—a tradition
The "silent land" mentioned in line 1 is a metaphorical (and this poem fits right into.
euphemistic) reference to death. Many writers have imagined
death as a country. Here, in picturing death not only as a METER
country but a silent one, Rossetti emphasizes the remoteness This poem is a sonnet
sonnet, and therefore uses iambic pentameter: a
and inaccessibility of the dead. No speech can make it back to line of five iambs
iambs, the metrical foot that goes da-DUM
DUM. In
the beloved once the speaker is gone. The metaphor, then, context, that sounds like this:
underscores the distance and sense of impassable separation
between the speaker and her lover; they can no longer Remem
mem- | ber me | when I | am gone | awa
wayy,
communicate, which is why the speaker implores her lover to
remember her. As many readers have remarked, iambic pentameter sounds a
At the same time, the silence of this silent land might also be lot like a heartbeat. A sonnet's iambic pentameter is thus
broken by the voice of this very poem. Art is one of the ways in perfectly matched to a poem about love and death—both of
which the dead can speak, and the very act of writing this poem which have a lot to do with how and whether someone's heart
is something like sending a letter from the "silent land." is beating.
The iambic pentameter here isn't perfectly regular, however.
Where Metaphor appears in the poem: Take a look at line 7, which begins with a trochee (DUM
DUM-da)
rather than an iamb (da-DUM
DUM):
• Line 2: “Gone far away into the silent land”
On
Only | remem-
mem- | ber me [...]

VOCABULARY The same thing happens again in line 13:

Silent land (Line 2) - While "silent land" could mean different Bet
Better | by far | you should | forget
get | and smile
things in different contexts, in this poem it is a metaphor for
death. In both of these lines, the shift of emphasis to the front of the
Counsel (Line 8) - Give advice. first word makes the speaker sound insistent: she's really
Corruption (Line 11) - Putrefaction, rotting. leaning on these words, making sure her beloved hears and
understands her.
Vestige (Line 12) - A little trace.
RHYME SCHEME
This poem uses the traditional rh
rhyme
yme scheme of a Petrarchan
FORM, METER, & RHYME sonnet
sonnet—or rather, one of several possible variations on that
rhyme scheme. Petrarchan sonnets typically start out with
FORM
pretty regular rhymes, and get a little more complicated in their
This poem is a Petrarchan sonnet
sonnet, a very old form first second halves; this poem is no exception. The rhyme scheme
developed in medieval Italy. This means its 14 lines can be here runs like this:
divided into an opening octave (an eight-line stanza) and
ABBA ABBA CDD ECE
closing sestet (a six-line stanza). Based on the poem's rhrhyme
yme
scheme (more on that in "Rhyme Scheme"), the sonnet can This movement from the balanced ABBA pattern to the more
further be broken down into two quatrains followed by two complicated variation between C, D, and E rhymes in the
tercets. second part mirrors the poem's thought. Just as the speaker
starts out insisting on one thing—that her beloved should
Typically, a sonnet's octave presents some sort of issue or
remember her—and then moves into the more difficult thought

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that her beloved shouldn't feel bad if he forgets her for a while,
the rhyme scheme starts out simple and regular and gets CONTEXT
knottier.
LITERARY CONTEXT
The vast majority of the rhymes here are on plain, monosyllabic
words: land and hand, day and pray, grieve and leave. This Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was an important Victorian
simplicity makes the poem feel both sweet and forceful. That poet, and she spent her life at the heart of her contemporary
last E rhyme, had and sad, isn't dramatic or flowery: it's just cultural world. The daughter of an artistic Italian family (her
plain and poignant. That the speaker only uses those E rhymes brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti was also a well-known poet and
in the last few lines of the poem makes their effect even painter), Rossetti was born in England, and grew up
stronger. surrounded by poetry and art. She began her own career
young; she wrote "Remember" when she was only 19.
Rossetti, unlike many poets, was popular and well-known in her
SPEAKER lifetime. Her long poem "Goblin
Goblin Mark
Marketet" started a Victorian
vogue for rather sinister fairy tales. She was also a noted early
While we're calling the speaker "she" and the addressee "he" in feminist figure, and many of her poems deal with the
this guide, the poem itself doesn't give readers even that much complexities of women's lives in a restrictive society. Frequent
information about its characters. The reader can know only this illnesses meant Rossetti turned much of her energy inward,
much of the speaker: this is a person who's both passionate and and her rich-but-tormented emotional life colors much of her
realistic. While she longs to be remembered by the beloved work.
person she's speaking to, she also understands human frailty,
and knows that although memory isn't perfect, people can have Rossetti was influenced by Elizabeth Barrett
a deep influence on each other even after they're forgotten. Browning
Browning—another popular female poet with strong ties to
Italy—and some of her contemporaries saw her as the older
There's a curious strength in this speaker's willingness to admit poet's natural successor. She was also connected to the Pre-
that, as much as she longs to be remembered, she might not get Raphaelite Brotherhood, the artistic school of which her
exactly what she wants. The speaker also comes across as brother Dante Gabriel was a founding member. Her father's
profoundly loving: she's selfless enough to feel that it's better work as a scholar of Italian literature meant she was exposed at
for her beloved to be happy than sad. But she doesn't pretend an early age to the great Italian poets Dante and Petrarch,
to be so selfless that she wants her lover to be happy and whose influence may be seen in her fondness for the Italian
forgetful right away or all the time. Her truthfulness is part of sonnet form.
her complex and honest understanding of love and grief.
Rossetti's reputation as a brilliant lyrical poet has never
tarnished, and she's still much-studied today. Her poetry has
SETTING been a major influence on writers from Virginia W Woolf
oolf to Philip
Larkin
Larkin.
There's no concrete setting in this poem, but the speaker
indirectly evokes the different worlds of the living and the HISTORICAL CONTEXT
dead. She calls death "the silent land," emphasizing the way that Christina Rossetti lived in a world marked both by
death prevents communication; only through memory and revolutionary change and reactionary conservatism. The
thought (or, indeed, through art like this very poem, which may Victorians were innovators and empire-builders, and England
record both memory and thought) can the dead speak to the reshaped itself considerably under the reign of Victoria, its first
living. The world of the living is physical; the "silent land" is truly powerful queen since Elizabeth I. A primarily rural
isolated, intangible, and mysterious. population made an unprecedented shift to the cities as factory
The land of the dead is also a place of "darkness and work outpaced farm work, and writers from Dick
Dickens
ens to Hardy
corruption": there doesn't seem to be much thought of a happy worried about the human effects of this kind of change.
afterlife here. The "silent land," whatever it is, doesn't seem to Perhaps in response to this speedy reconfiguration of the
be a place from which the speaker will look down on her world, Victorian social culture became deeply conservative.
beloved twanging a harp. Memory is so important to this Women were expected to adhere to a strict code of sexual
speaker because the "silent land" will keep her and her beloved morals: a woman must be chaste, pliant, and submissive, and
completely apart. any deviation could mean social exile. But within this repressive
landscape, women writers began to flourish, asserting the
complexity and meaningfulness of their own lives. Rossetti's
work was part of a tide of bold and moving poetry and fiction by
Victorian women; Charlotte and Emily Brontë and Elizabeth

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 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com
Barrett Browning are only a few of the writers whose work • The P
Poem
oem's's Manuscript — See pictures of the poem in
achieved contemporary recognition against the odds. Rossetti's own handwriting. (https:/
(https://www
/www.bonhams.com/
.bonhams.com/
auctions/20923/lot/407/)

MORE RESOUR
RESOURCES
CES LITCHARTS ON OTHER CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
POEMS
EXTERNAL RESOURCES • Cousin Kate
• More on Rossetti's Life and WWork
ork — A short biography and • In an Artist's Studio
links to more of Rossetti's poems from the Poetry • Maude Clare
Foundation. (https:/
(https://www
/www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/
.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ • No, Thank Y You,
ou, John
christina-rossetti)
• A Reading of the P
Poem
oem — Listen to the actor Mairin HOW T
TO
O CITE
O'Hagan perform the poem aloud. (https:/
(https:///youtu.be/
SpmK4p5bY20)
MLA
• Gender and P Power
ower in Rossetti's W
Work
ork — An article on Nelson, Kristin. "Remember." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 12 Aug
Christina Rossetti's influence as a feminist thinker. 2020. Web. 15 Jun 2021.
(https:/
(https://www
/www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/
.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/
christina-rossetti-gender-and-power) CHICAGO MANUAL
• Portr
ortraits
aits of Rossetti — A selection of portraits of Rossetti Nelson, Kristin. "Remember." LitCharts LLC, August 12, 2020.
from London's National Portrait Gallery. Some depict her Retrieved June 15, 2021. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/
with her artistic family, and some are by a member of her christina-rossetti/remember.
artistic family—namely her brother, the painter and poet
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (https:/
(https://www
/www.npg.org.uk/
.npg.org.uk/
collections/search/person/mp03876/christina-georgina-
rossetti)

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