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 plann'd:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then to 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 that you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

Christina Rossetti

Written at the age of 19, this beautiful sonnet is perhaps Rossetti's best known poem. Thematically, it doesn't require deep investigation, remembrance for love lost in death. The poet wants to be remembered by her suitor ("Only remember me") but then again, feels it might be better if he forgets, if only to save him the sense of enduring sadness that comes with memory.

But it is not only this melancholic subject that appeals to me. The young Rossetti was so accomplished in her use of structure. She keeps to the rhyme pattern of the Petrarchan sonnet but lines often as not run onto the next line - in a sense - undermining that structure, to great effect.

She has a turn of phrase too, a simple economy of language, that renders me mute.

'Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay'

Just splendid!