Remember
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Christina Rossetti
Remember
The opening two lines of Rossettis sonnet “Remember” introduces the idea of separation, whether the speakers sudden departure is because she has chosen to leave her lover or because she is dying, either one is not immediately clear. As the poem unfolds, the reader understands that death will divide the couple, and the initial hint of that is the phrase “silent land” to describe the place the speaker is going. The words seem to define a cemetery or individual grave more than heaven, and “silent,” in particular, implies a dormant state of existence and a place that are neither joyous nor painful, pleasant nor sad. The opening lines also portray the speakers desire to be remembered and she request her lover to do just that. This request will become more significant at the end of the poem when the dying woman appears to do an about-face with what she asks of him.
The themes are eluded throughout the poem. Lines one through three deal with the element of death. Lines five and six hint that Rossetti and her lover were to be married, showing their love for each other, and lines nine through fourteen are Rossettis instructions that her lover move on with his life and not dwell on her death because she would rather he “forget and smile…than remember and be sad”. Rossetti uses a metaphor in line one when she states, “Remember me when I am gone away”, the metaphor being gone away instead of the word dead. She uses another metaphor in line two where she writes, “Gone far away into the silent land”, using the term “silent land” instead of eternal life. The third metaphor is found in line eleven, “For if the darkness and corruption leave”, using darkness and corruption as a metaphor for anger at her death.