Remember

By Christina Rossetti

“Remember” is Christina Rossetti’s sonnet in which a dying woman asks the person she loves to remember her, then tells him it would be better to forget her and smile than to remember her and be sad. She wrote the 14-line poem in 1849, at 18, and published it in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).

Our reading is that the poem’s power lies in a single reversal. It opens as an insistent plea to be remembered and ends by giving that plea away. Read only the first half, as many funeral readings do, and you miss the generosity that makes it remarkable.

ON THIS PAGE
Summary · The Poem · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ
Glossary · Related Poems

Summary

A woman who expects to die speaks to the person she loves. Remember me, she says, when I am gone, when you can no longer hold my hand or tell me about the future we planned. It will be too late then for advice or prayer.

Then she changes direction. If you forget me for a while and remember later, do not grieve. If anything of my thoughts survives death, she concludes, it would be better for you to forget me and smile than to remember me and be sad.

The Poem

The text below follows the first edition of Goblin Market and Other Poems (Macmillan, 1862).

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 planned:
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.

Background

Christina Rossetti wrote the sonnet in July 1849, when she was 18, and published it 13 years later in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), the book that made her name. It was printed with the subtitle “Sonnet,” between “A Birthday” and “After Death.” It was written, in other words, by a young woman imagining her own death, not by a grieving survivor.

Rossetti was a devout High Anglican, and death runs through her work, usually shadowed by the promise of resurrection. What is striking here is how little of that promise the poem offers. There is a “silent land” and a mention of prayer, but no heaven and no reunion. The poem stays on this side of the grave, concerned less with the speaker’s fate than with the feelings of the person left behind. Today it is one of the most popular readings at funerals.

Analysis and Themes

The whole power of “Remember” lies in one reversal. It opens as a demand to be remembered and ends by giving that demand away, and the turn between the two is the most moving thing in the poem.

A Plea That Reverses Itself

The first eight lines press the request. “Remember me” opens the poem, opens line 5, and returns as “Only remember me” in line 7. Three times in eight lines, the speaker asks not to be forgotten, with the insistence of someone afraid the point will not hold. Then comes the turn, on “Yet”: “Yet if you should forget me for a while.” The speaker who just begged to be remembered now imagines being forgotten and, instead of protesting, offers comfort. By the last two lines, she has reversed herself completely.

The Generosity of Being Forgotten

The closing couplet holds the poem’s moral: “Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad.” It treats remembrance not as a gift owed to the dead but as a possible burden on the living, and it chooses to lift that burden. The generosity is hard-won. The octave has already shown how much the speaker wants to be remembered, so the release in the sestet is an act of will, not indifference. The tenderness is in the effort it takes to say “forget me.”

The Silent Land

For a poet as religious as Rossetti, the poem’s picture of death is strikingly bare. Death is “the silent land,” a place of going away and of hands no longer held. What survives is described in the faintest terms, only “A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,” and even that depends on whether anything outlasts “the darkness and corruption” of the grave. By holding back the religious comfort she could have supplied, Rossetti keeps the poem honest about loss, and the speaker’s generosity counts for more because it comes without a guaranteed afterlife.

Form and Technique

“Remember” is a Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet in iambic pentameter, as in “re-MEM-ber ME when I am GONE a-WAY.” It divides into an eight-line octave rhyming ABBAABBA, using only two rhyme sounds as the strict form requires, and a six-line sestet rhyming CDDECE. Between them comes the turn, or volta. Rossetti puts her reversal exactly on that hinge: the octave makes the plea, and the sestet takes it back. The form and the thought have the same shape.

The language is plain almost to bareness, with short, common words and very few images, so the poem sounds like a person speaking quietly. The one moment of pure technical beauty is line 4, “Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.” The line hovers on its own indecision, “turn” against “turning” and “go” against “stay,” acting out the reluctance of someone who cannot quite leave.

Notable Lines

Three moments mark the arc from plea to hesitation to release.

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;

Lines 1 to 2

The plea, and the poem’s gentle refusal to name death directly. The repeated “gone” lets the distance widen as the line moves.

Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

Line 4

The most beautiful line in the sonnet, catching the reluctance of leaving in a single hovering motion.

Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Lines 13 to 14

The closing reversal. The balanced phrases, forget and smile, remember and be sad, make the choice sound calm, but the calm is the achievement.

Themes

Three ideas run through the poem.

Selfless love. The speaker puts the happiness of the person she leaves behind above her own wish to be remembered.

Memory and grief. Remembering the dead can honor them or burden the living, and the poem weighs the two.

Death. Death is a quiet departure into “the silent land,” described without the religious consolation Rossetti usually offered.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about “Remember” by Christina Rossetti.

What is “Remember” by Christina Rossetti about?

It is about a woman who expects to die and speaks to the person she loves. She begins by asking him to remember her, then changes her mind and tells him that if he forgets her for a while, he should not grieve, because it is better for him to forget and smile than to remember and be sad.

What type of sonnet is “Remember”?

It is a Petrarchan, or Italian, sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter divided into an octave rhyming ABBAABBA and a sestet rhyming CDDECE. The turn between them, on the word “Yet,” is where the speaker reverses her request.

How old was Christina Rossetti when she wrote “Remember”?

She was 18. Rossetti wrote the sonnet in July 1849 and published it 13 years later in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).

What is the theme of “Remember”?

The main theme is selfless love in the face of death. The speaker wants to be remembered, but she cares more about the happiness of the person she leaves behind than about her own claim on his memory.

Why is “Remember” read at funerals?

Its opening, “Remember me when I am gone away,” speaks directly for the dead, and its ending gently frees the living from guilt and prolonged grief. That combination of a plea and a release makes it one of the most often read poems at funerals and memorial services.

Glossary

A few words carry more weight than they seem to.

• the silent land (line 2): Death, or the world of the dead, named gently rather than directly.
• counsel (line 8): Give advice.
• corruption (line 11): The physical decay of the body after death, not moral corruption.
• vestige (line 12): A faint trace or remnant.

Related Poems

If this poem moves you, these speak to the living about death and grief.

• Song (When I Am Dead, My Dearest) by Christina Rossetti: The twin of “Remember,” in which a dying woman also frees her beloved to remember or forget.
• Crossing the Bar by Alfred Tennyson: A calm farewell that asks the living for “no sadness of farewell.”
• Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickinson: Another woman poet’s quiet, unafraid picture of dying.
• Sonnet 71 by William Shakespeare: “No longer mourn for me when I am dead,” the earlier sonnet that asks the beloved to forget rather than suffer.