December 30, 2024
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English writer born into a family of artists. She was the youngest of four children and during her life wrote devotional and children’s poems and is especially known for her Christmas carols “In the Bleak Midwinter” and “Love Came Down at Christmas. She died December 29, 1894, at 64 years old.
Her well-known sonnet “Remember” deals with love and death. She tells her lover how she hopes he will react when she has “gone far away into the silent land.”
Hear a reading of Christina Rossetti’s poem “Remember,” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45000/remember-56d224509b7ae)
Remember
By 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 plann’d:
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.
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