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Christina Rossetti · 1862
Remember
The full text of Christina Rossetti’s poem, what it means in plain words, and its best lines as pictures you can download and share.
- Poet
- Christina Rossetti
- Published
- 1862
- First line
- Remember me when I am gone away
Remember
Christina Rossetti
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.
Best lines
Download lines from Remember
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Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land
Meaning and summary
The speaker asks the one she loves to remember her after she has died, “gone far away into the silent land”, when they can no longer hold hands or plan their future together.
Then the sonnet turns. If he should forget her for a while and then remember, he must not grieve: she would far rather be forgotten and see him smile than be remembered with sadness. It is a poem of love that puts the other person’s happiness first.
Form
A Petrarchan sonnet: an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, with the turn at “Yet” in line 9.
About the poet
Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) was an English poet of the Victorian age. She wrote “Remember” in 1849, at nineteen, and published it in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).
Poems
More classic poems
Questions
About the poem
What is Remember by Christina Rossetti about?
A dying speaker who asks to be remembered, but would rather be forgotten than cause her beloved sadness.
Where is the turn in the sonnet?
At line 9, with “Yet if you should forget me for a while”.
How old was Rossetti when she wrote it?
Nineteen, in 1849.