P
POETRY SPOTLIGHT
LITERARY THOUGHTS
Remember
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.
One thought:
The "Silent Land": Rossetti uses this beautiful euphemism to describe death, capturing the physical and emotional silence that separates the living from the dead.
The Volta (The Turn): The poem splits dramatically at line 9 with the word "Yet". The first 8 lines (Octave) are a plea for remembrance, emphasizing fear of being forgotten. But in the final 6 lines (Sestet), the speaker realizes that true emotional connection should not cause sadness. Shifting to an act of absolute selfless love, the speaker values the lover's happiness above being remembered, concluding that it is better for the lover to forget and smile than to remember and be sad.
Extra Information
| Form: | An Italianate (Petrarchan) sonnet written in iambic pentameter, rhymed ABBA ABBACDDECE. |
| Resound Thought of Song: | Arijit Singh (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil) — "Sajda tera kar na sakoon..." |
| Literary Parallel: | Sonnet 71 by William Shakespeare "Lest the wise world should look into your moan..." |
Shakespeare writes to his beloved, explicitly commanding them not to mourn him after he dies because he does not want his memory to cause them pain or expose them to the mockery of the world.
Just like Rossetti, Shakespeare argues that the surviving lover's peace of mind is vastly more important than keeping a dead man's memory alive. He demands complete forgetfulness as the ultimate act of shielding his lover from grief.